Michel Corboz keeps coming back for more. This is his fourth commercial recording of the Mass in B minor, the first of which dates from 1972. The current approach is the hybrid of a modern-instrument group playing at modern pitch but in an “informed” manner as to gesture, balance and a good selection of the trappings of a modern major Baroque performance. The note rather obfuscates the matter by not providing information and issuing a picture of the Ensemble Instrumental de Lausanne playing period instruments.

All that aside, and with such intense competition (in whatever tradition you prefer your Mass to be performed), Corboz’s reading is ultimately neither interesting enough nor performed quite at the level we have come to expect from leading exponents. The Lausanne choral singers are certainly no slouches; the “Qui tollis” is illuminating in its gentle throbbing bass circumnavigated by sweetsounding flutes, and there is true collective grandeur in the “Et exspecto” and “Hosanna”. Yet elsewhere Corboz’s insistence on unremittingly detached articulation (listen to the tetchy fugue of the “Cum Sancto Spiritu”) shows up technical limitations.

Corboz makes precious little of the potential for either textural and dynamic contrast or the ebb and flow of phrasing which makes Frieder Bernius’s account (Carus, 3/07) such a delight. This is particularly evident from the decidedly matter-of-fact “Et resurrexit” to the absurdly breathless Sanctus (the fastest on record?) via stretched sopranos in the “Confiteor”. There are a few places where the old stager has something special to say. Among a selection of good, if not top-notch soloists, the “Et in unum” captures a wonderful sense of bonding as Yumiko Tanimura and Valérie Bonnard, light and unassuming (as we delight in Bach’s capacity to set so much text so unhurriedly), inhabit the essence of this perennial jewel. The tantalisingly quiet dynamic in the hurly-burly of “Credo in unum Deum” is also strikingly effective.

Corboz’s previous Mass recordings have often included a battery of deafening trumpets (certainly the first two in “unreconstructed” mode). Restraint in this department has reaped some dividends in terms of overall balance, but the recorded sound offers a disorienting perspective, whose inner lines lack adequate clarity, and artificial reverberation is all too evident after final chords. Only dyed-in-thewool Corboz fans will want to explore further.