Listening to this bright and honest Missa solemnis brings memories of the 1970s and early ’80s, when period-instrument bands and medium-size professional choirs were opening ears with new textures, colours and balances. A popular phrase back then likened it to ‘cleaning up old paintings’, but there was also a sense of clearing away much of the anachronistic baggage some great works had acquired over the years to find something that could have been its original context. Notwithstanding that there have been other superb period versions of this work since then – notably by Gardiner (Archiv, 3/91) and Harnoncourt (Sony Classical, 8/16) – there is quite a feel of that sort here. In short, this sounds like a Beethoven whose personal experience of sacred choral music was of Haydn, Hummel and Cherubini rather than one who was imagining the world to come in Berlioz, Brahms or Verdi. And although that is not the only way to look at it, it certainly has much to recommend it.

The sound first. Suzuki’s choir is marginally smaller than Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and, while in technical terms less assured than them (though more so than Harnoncourt’s Arnold Schoenberg Choir), it achieves a greater clarity and openness of texture. This immediately makes pitch, harmony and counterpoint more easily apparent, in itself a considerable advantage in demystifying this ‘difficult’ work, and the same can be said for Suzuki’s soloists, none of whom has (or at any rate uses) a ‘big hall’ vibrato. James Gilchrist’s decidedly English-sounding tenor is an unexpected presence here but his lean and flexible tone certainly adds to the humanising effect.

Similar transparency in the orchestra, aided by a favourable balance, also adds quick details and striking colours not always audible elsewhere: Suzuki shows Norringtonian delight in bringing out Beethoven’s rhythmic impulses (especially valuable in the many places where tied notes anticipate a bar line), giving the timpani their head, letting the winds squawk excitedly in the ‘in gloria Dei Patris’ fugue of the Gloria or soulfully commune at the start of the Sanctus, and firmly delineating the strands in even as straightforward-looking a prospect as the opening of the Credo.

And what of the greater effect? Well, nobody would claim that this is a heavyweight Missa solemnis. With Suzuki’s vision of it apparently residing so much in making aurally it comprehensible and human in scale, some of the other deeper, broader or higher levels that are available prove elusive. Despite some lovely moments and surprising sounds, there are perhaps too many places – notably parts of the Agnus Dei – where droops in energy suggest that the personal intensity of a bigger picture is lacking. Where Gardiner’s recording is a sleek, expertly controlled Mass of the Enlightenment and Harnoncourt’s a profoundly Catholic statement by turns tender, fervent and terrifying, Suzuki’s successes with it seem to come principally from his keen ear and personal charm. For those who find weightier performances daunting (and nothing wrong with that!), this friendly account is certainly worth hearing, but in the wider context it leaves much unsaid.