The Missa in tempore belli of 1796 was Haydn’s reaction to Napoleon’s first threat to Austria. But this was no celebratory offering of peace, for to speak of peace with the enemy was an offence punishable by death. So the deeply religious composer opposed to conflict expressed his feelings through a specifically titled liturgical work to commemorate the ordination of a priest. Helmuth Rilling does not address its inherent paradoxes. From the beginning, where he alters three militantly forceful bars for the timpani (on disc only Nikolaus Harnoncourt obeys the notation), he largely misses the hollow undertones that suffuse all but the finale. Here he seizes zestfully on the overt picture of an advancing army, and rises to the optimism of an impassioned “Dona nobis pacem”.

All Haydn’s music of his last 13 years was composed in time of war but political tensions seem to be conveyed differently through the unusual orchestration of Theresienmesse (1799). Just one bassoon with pairs of clarinets and trumpets to reinforce the strings and timpani offer a split instrumental fabric; but Rilling covers up the threadbare patch in the spectrum caused by the absence of flutes, oboes and horns with a forwardly placed choir and soloists whose refulgent singing masks Haydn’s shrewdly structured sound-combination of suavity and piercing astringency. This performance isn’t carefully thought out; nor is it profoundly felt, particularly so in the Credo’s “Et incarnatus est” and the Benedictus. Trevor Pinnock and John Eliot Gardiner pay far more attention to the work’s many facets.