Hot on the heels of the Bach Choir's recent Howells Stabat Mater comes this collection from the ever-rewarding Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir. Paul Spicer was a pupil of Herbert Howells and here traces the creative development of Britain's supreme 20th-century composer for the liturgy, including three rarities never before recorded. Levavi oculos meos is a lovely anthem for soprano voices from 1959 that contains delightful Howellsian gestures familiar from his canticle settings, while the album takes its title from a dramatic setting of the Henry Vaughan poem When first thine eies unveil, which features a fine solo from Christopher Fitzgerald Lombard.