The title of his symphonic oratorio Quo vadis comes from the story of Peter during his flight from Rome, asking Jesus where he is going; on being told that Jesus is going to the city to be crucified once more, Peter is inspired to return himself – to his martyrdom. The two selected lines from the Apocrypha, set in Latin, form the ninth of 11 movements, which intersperse texts from ancient Sumerian-Assyrian, Greek and Sufi sources (all in German translation) with purely instrumental movements. The tone of the texts is resolutely earnest, shading into anger and exaltation.

Quo vadis was premiered in May 2009 but for much of its duration sounds more like something by an inter-war contemporary of Franz Schmidt or Hans Pfitzner (think Hindemith Mathis but without the uplift or the glow). In fact the musical style is so relentlessly middle-of-the-road that it is hard to detect much passion behind it, the more so since the constantly busy orchestral textures make it hard to discern a word the chorus is singing (Michael Weinius’s tenor solos fare much better in this respect).

Having enjoyed my encounter with Eliasson’s gritty First Symphony, I would love to be more positive about this ambitious and obviously sincere work. As it is, I suspect that its appeal may remain confined to specialists in the Nordic scene. But that is certainly no reflection on the dedicated performance or on CPO’s admirable initiative.