Nethsingha treats each psalm as a mini tone-poem of vocal affects, each line inflected in distinctive ways to elicit meaning and emotion from the biblical text...There is a danger, of course, that too much pointing and parsing of text can sound pernickety. Nethsingha largely avoids this, and his insistence on crisp articulation pays major dividends in a feisty reading of Psalm 52.

Andrew Nethsingha, well established as one of England’s leading choir directors, guides all the proceedings with the surest of hands and keenest of ears. The diction of the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge is so exquisitely perfect that one can take dictation from it, and yet there is absolutely no sense of metronomic stiffness...Choral singing at this level of perfection can never be taken for granted.

The choir never over-sings but its timbre can tense up and slacken like a quartet’s. Musically, this is the best of them.

Nethsingha and the Choir of St John’s clearly recognise the importance of these liturgical poems-in-music: the performances here are evidence that they are guided by the principle that everything — metre, emphasis, lyricism, momentum, dynamics and clarity — plays an equally crucial role.