Album: Karl Jenkins Gloria/Te Deum (EMI Classical)

As with his earlier Adiemus and last year's Christmas album Stella Natalis, Karl Jenkins' new piece Gloria, while ostensibly a Christian work, embodies the kind of multi-cultural holism we're unlikely to encounter in either politics or pulpit, with readings from Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and Islamic sources interspersed among the five movements like inscrutable musical sorbets.

Played by the LSO accompanied by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the music itself may be less innovative than some of Jenkins' earlier work, but it's hard to bear any malice towards something as softly comforting as "The Prayer: Laudamus te", or as urgently involving as "The Psalm: Tehellim – Psalm 150".

DOWNLOAD THIS The Prayer: Laudamus te; The Psalm: Tehellim – Psalm 150