Harry Christophers continues his exploration of Haydn’s late music with a pairing of the penultimate symphony and antepenultimate Mass. The Theresienmesse especially suits this orchestra’s sound, which is a touch softer-grained than some other period-instrument groups. The highest woodwind instruments are a pair of clarinets, giving the work a unique sonic profile without the cut-through of the Harmoniemesse’s flute and oboes or the Nelson Mass’s triple trumpets and prominent organ.

The Drumroll Symphony, too, is given a performance that majors on a chamber-like intimacy, in contrast to the outgoing theatricality of a reading such as Marc Minkowski’s with Les Musiciens du Louvre. Minkowski also drives the music somewhat harder, whereas Christophers’s conception is more relaxed, locating the urbanity of this wonderful symphony but missing out, perhaps, on the subversive wit with which Haydn at the height of his powers was able to invest his entertainment music.

The Mass is as enjoyable on the recording as it must have been in concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall as recently as January. The four big-voiced soloists bring character to their parts and the H+H chorus operate as a well-drilled unit. Instrumental balance is not fully ideal, with the all-important clarinets sometimes a subdued presence, and recordings planned for the studio rather than the concert hall might be considered to exhibit more imaginative shaping and phrasing in places. Trevor Pinnock’s 1992 recording was long considered standard among period-instrument performances but the spacious Chandos sound of Richard Hickox’s Collegium Musicum 90, recorded just a few years later, imparts something extra-special to the Theresienmesse.