Founded 10 years ago by the conductor Mathieu Romano, Ensemble Aedes – formerly Ensemble Vocal Aedes – have made distinguished contributions to a number of major recordings of late, most notably, perhaps, Jérémie Rhorer’s continuing cycle of Mozart’s operas with Le Cercle de l’Harmonie and François-Xavier Roth’s Daphnis et Chloé (Harmonia Mundi, 6/17) with Les Siècles. Here, however, they take centre stage in performances of Fauré’s Requiem and a cappella works by Poulenc and Debussy for a disc that has an air of a manifesto about it. ‘It shows who we are’, Romano writes in a booklet note, and it is indeed unquestionably strong.

Romano uses Jean-Michel Nectoux’s edition of the 1893 score for the Fauré, which reunites his choir with Les Siècles in an interpretation that is often uncompromisingly stark. His aim, he tells us, is to explore the Requiem’s ‘dramatic component’ and the ‘existential angst’ that informs it, and anyone who sees the work as primarily consolatory is likely to be brought up sharp by the opening, where Les Siècles’ brass and strings sound severe to the point of austerity, and the first choral entries have a lofty, hieratic quality that immediately takes us into a sombre world of formal ritual.

Later on there are real throbs of fear, first at ‘Christe eleison’, then in the ‘Dies illa’ section of the Libera me. The coolly radiant Sanctus and Pie Jesu offer the first intimations of hope but genuine serenity is only reached with the breathtaking final release into the In Paradisum. Using French pronunciation of Fauré’s own day rather than standardised Latin, Ensemble Aedes sing with admirable refinement. The tenors and altos sound particularly good at the start of the Offertory, and soprano lines hover and float with great poise and ease. The soloists, both fine, are drawn from the choir and placed a bit too far forwards in a recording that is otherwise scrupulously balanced.

Ensemble Aedes are terrific, meanwhile, in Figure humaine, Poulenc’s great Resistance work, written undercover in 1943 to privately circulated texts by Paul Éluard. The recording itself, made in a different venue from the Fauré, is on the reverberant side, occasionally losing some detail in the bass. But the performance has such fierce intensity and exactitude that you cannot help but be drawn into it, and the final blazing cry of ‘Liberté’ has a tremendous impact.

For the Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans, meanwhile, Romano gives us an edition of his own based on Debussy’s manuscripts, which uses the original 1898 version of the first and last songs rather than the 1908 revision when the central ‘Quand j’ai ouy le tabourin’ was added. They’re meticulously done but feel anticlimactic after the Poulenc, and the disc actually works best if you programme it so that the Debussy comes immediately after the Requiem.