The 1783 trip to Italy of the musician and writer JF Reichardt had far-reaching implications. He returned to his native Germany with Orazio Benevoli’s large-scale In diluvio aquarum multarum for 16 voices and showed it to his colleague Carl Fasch, who in turn was so inspired by it that he wrote something similar. Together, these two pieces became the Berlin Academy’s choral bagatelles until Mendelssohn arrived as a student, composing the 16-voice Hora est for his sister Fanny’s 23rd birthday in 1828.

This repertoire remains as demanding today as it was then, and on the rare occasions they are performed these works are noticeable in their uniqueness as polychoral pieces that contain neither the stamp of Spem in alium nor the sound world of Schütz or Gabrieli. When they are sung well, they are neither tiring on the ear nor muddy in texture, and leave space for subtlety and nuance in the music. There are a number of junctures (the ‘Et in terra pax’ from the Fasch, for instance) where there are chords placed either as muster points for the conductor and multitudinous singers or simply to impress the audience with their force, but overall this recording is more concerned with beauty. Sadly, it often misses opportunities for it, largely through inadequacies of blend and tuning or the premature loosening of its phrasing. Taking into account its mighty forces and the unforgivingly dry acoustics of the Church of St Nicholas in Hamburg, though, it does nevertheless maintain a surprising serenity.