Now in his mid-fifties, Joby Talbot is a well-known British composer for concert, stage and screen, whose best-known works are his full-length narrative ballets Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2010) and The Winter’s Tale (2013), which in their different ways have won him something of a popular following. Talbot has also composed extensively for voice and choir as on the CD under review in his setting of Octavio Paz’s 1957 poem, Piedra del sol, whose text draws on Aztec symbolism and uses surrealist imagery to explore cyclical time.

Talbot’s 70-minute musical span fully embraces the poem’s trajectory – its tripartite structure divides as Creation, Despair and Salvation – and explores the many possibilities it opens up in the vocal writing, with the addition of a marimba, superbly played by Thomas Burritt.

The professional chamber choir of Conspirare under artistic director Craig Hella Johnson clearly relish the challenges set by Talbot: it gives a fine account of an intricate score, not least because of its ability to get behind and convey the meaning of Paz’s words.