Robert Quinney (organ), Choir of Westminster Abbey/James O'Donnell Hyperion CDA 67858****

This disc of choral music from the reign of King James I features the work of just four composers: Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tomkins, Edmund Hooper and Robert Ramsey. At the heart of the sequence lie Tomkins's deeply-expressive When David heardand Then David mourned, pieces in which the tension of the dissonances is relished by James O'Donnell's Westminster Abbey singers more fully than is often the case with English choirs. Anyone who likes that particular tension will be delighted by the scrunches of Ramsey's How are the mighty fallen.The representation of Gibbons includes Almighty and Everlasting God, O clap your handsand four pieces for organ in a collection that somehow contrives to be more than the sum of its parts. See url.ie/4qdb