Padmore's clean Tenor finds an ideal vehicle in the first of four world culture explorations from the composer Alec Roth and the writer Vikram Seth. The poems take us to 8th-Century China, but we’re always close to the here and now. Roth's oriental-flavoured score may be short of variety but there's a transparent, haunting beauty about it, and the accompaniments for violin, harp and guitar are a joy. Chinese Gardens, a perkier song cycle, rounds off the CD nicely.