The three items which make this suitable for Passiontide and Easter will be obvious – two of them are billed on the CD cover – but the recording is valuable for the other items, too, not least the two settings of the Evensong canticles, which open and close the programme. John Quinn “strongly recommend[ed] this CD to all who love the music of the English church” – see review – and, as so often, I find myself in complete agreement with him. The mp3 sound is good.

Leighton was steeped in the Anglican tradition in his youth as a cathedral chorister, and he contributed to its repertory throughout his life. There are two settings here of the Evening Canticles, framing the sequence, one for Magdalen College, Oxford (1959), and the Second Service (1971) composed in memory of the organist Brian Runnett, who died tragically in his mid-30s. They are among the most powerful since those of Herbert Howells, vividly and thoughtfully illustrating each verse, the Second Service ending with a hushed Gloria. The Easter Sequence, with trumpet obbligato, here played superbly by Crispian Steele-Perkins, is wonderfully written for trebles, and the cantata, Crucifixus pro nobis, using the 17th-century texts by Patrick Carey and Phineas Fletcher, is a movingly spare and compressed setting of the Passion story. With James Oxley the sensitive tenor soloist, it comes over as a work of real substance and deserves the widest dissemination. Christopher Whitton, the responsive organist, has his solo item in Rockingham, based on the hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. Robinson obtains very good singing from St John’s College Choir and the acoustic of St John’s College Chapel is splendidly captured in this fine Naxos recording.