National Chamber Choir/ Paul Hillier RTÉ lyric fm CD 131***

Paul Hillier begins this potted survey of "choral music from Ireland" with the calm certainty of Laeta lux est hodiernafrom the 14th-century Dublin Troper, a strand that's followed through in sweeter manner in Percy Grainger's Irish Tune from County Derryand in the slow, ultimately suspended flight of Charles Villiers Stanford's The Blue Bird. Incredibly, after Stanford, 20th-century Ireland is ignored in favour of the wilting Englishness of Moeran's Songs of Springtimeand Bax's more contrapuntally engaging This Worldes Joie. The 21st-century inclusions are more interesting, from the cushioning clusters with which Ian Wilson's The Beloved and Her Loverprovides a background for sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, and the tongue-twisterish intricacies of both Kevin Volans's One Day Fineand Andrew Hamilton's Everything Is Ridiculous. See url.ie/57c6