I was first aware of Joby Talbot back in the 90s as the arranger for the Divine Comedy in their brilliant early albums, on which he also occasionally appeared as that most rare of beasts: a pop oboist. He later graduated to TV and film work – including The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – as well as three full-length ballets for Covent Garden. In 2005 he wrote the extended choral piece Path of Miracles, originally written for Tenebrae and widely performed by them, and later also recorded by the US group Conspirare. This extraordinary piece has a good claim to be the finest choral piece of the century (it was sung by the BBC Singers in the Proms this August). 

Now, more than 20 years later, comes a second large-scale choral work, co-commissioned by Conspirare (who have made this recording) and the BBC Singers, who will give the UK premiere on 24 September. Piedra de sol(“Sunstone”) is a 70-minute meditation for choir and marimba setting the surrealist poem of the same name by the Mexican Octavio Paz, whose work Talbot discovered while writing his last ballet. The poem, according to the booklet, meditates “on cyclical time and the possibility of breaking its grip through poetry and love”, and Talbot had been struck by the “hugeness of the poet’s vision; the cosmic immensity of the imagery”. He has responded with music that has a single-minded intensity, while following the whimsical metaphors of the words wherever they lead. It is a technical challenge for the composer – all the lines have 11 syllables and the accentuation needs to be spot on – but the music never slips into predictability.

The 25-voice Conspirare sing beautifully and with complete artistic sympathy, which comes directly from their director, Craig Hella Johnson, the guiding force behind the piece’s commissioning. Piedra de sol is a serious piece – like Path of Miracles it is contemplative and challenging – but its harmonic weight never gets clogged, and the moments of textural clarity when they arrive are revelatory. The choir is complemented with a marimba – which is nominally optional but feels integral – playing tremolos that colour the timbre, but very much sitting within the choir. The solo voices that emerge from the choir are a strength of Conspirare.

This is a major new addition to the choral repertoire and I am sure it will be taken up by lots of choirs. It is a fine work and very well sung. I have listened to it a number of times, and its merits become more apparent with each hearing. For all the similarities, Piedra de sol is a different beast from Path of Miracles, in some ways more technically proficient and elegantly structured. But if Piedra de soldoesn’t quite have the breath-taking magic of the earlier piece, it’s fair enough to say: what does?