Balfour Gardiner’s glowing Evening Hymn (‘Te lucis ante terminum’) of 1908 opens the programme. The organ introduction never fails to thrill, and his use of long pedal points ratchets up the emotional voltage to marvellous effect. Like a fine Edwardian dreadnought, it sails forwards with confidence. Ireland’s Greater love also tugs at the heart-strings. Layton’s sopranos produce some laser-quality brightness at the climax and soprano soloist Helena Paish combines warmth with innocence. Only the very brief baritone solo sounds slightly undernourished. In recent vears Bairstow’s wartime anthem Lord, thou bast been our refuge (1916) has been taken up by more of our major choirs after a long period of neglect. Merton College, Oxford’s splendid recent recording under Benjamin Nicholas features Bairstow’s original orchestral scoring and comes in at over a minute quicker. There is a definite sense of luxuriousness in the Cambridge recording but no hint of the music dragging.

For sheer beauty of sound, nothing beats Patrick Hadley’s wedding anthem My beloved spake of 1936 with its arched phrases floating effortlessly: a technical tour de force, given the vast dynamic range demanded. After bathing in such ecstatic warmth, Kenneth Leighton’s Let all the world provides something of an invigorating cold bath, bursting with mid-’60s quartal energy, though clearly the work of a well- trained former cathedral chorister.

Jonathan Dove’s Seek him bubbles and sparkles with spellbinding intensity, and the pair of anthems by Charles Wood and Basil Harwood’s O how glorious (warhorses all) are deeply satisfying. Jonathan Lee and Harrison Cole share the organist role with an assertive authority beyond their tender years, bringing out every quasi-orchestral coloration. As a bonus Cole plays Matthew Martin’s St Albans Triptych of 2019, commissioned in memory of the late Peter Hurford. The Ely instrument has never sounded more full of fire and vim.”