Honegger’s masterpiece has never been short of recordings or fully committed interpreters, and it deserves both, even if English listeners of the past have paled at the puns and the emotive excess of Paul Claudel’s text, and at the necessary fervour of an actor such as Fiona Shaw in the title-role. Online you can find Judith Chemla accompanying herself in a cabaret version of Schubert’s ‘Ständchen’, sung with a fragile, breathy, high soprano. Too cute for Joan of Arc? Some will find it so, but more than Marthe Keller (for Ozawa – DG, 4/91) or even Marion Cotillard (Alpha, 8/15) she claims our sympathy with a wide-eyed innocence that recalls the role’s first recorded interpreter, Marthe Dugard (for Belgian EMI in 1943).

Honegger himself reportedly preferred a concert production, such as the booklet photos illustrate here, to a full staging. Astute disposition of forces and microphones in the Concertgebouw spreads the complex tapestry of Honegger’s score before us without unravelling it or bleaching it of colour: the barking-dog ondes martenot and trio of saxophones are well caught, as is the glowering mood of the Prologue and the low satire of the card game in which Joan’s life is bargained away.

Stéphane Denève’s spacious pacing is to the work’s advantage in many places such as the climactic dialogue, ‘L’épée de Jeanne’, between Joan and her confessor, Brother Dominic (Jean-Claude Druout, wonderfully wise and subdued). Greater urgency and less self-conscious polish would more vividly have evoked the gathering clamour of bells in the eighth scene, as well as bringing welcome light relief to the good-humoured clash of folk songs in the ninth.

However, the tension of the final scene at the stake builds steadily, with superb French enunciation from both Dutch choruses and polished contributions from the solo singers, especially Claire de Sévigné as Joan’s guiding spirit, the Virgin. The Montpellier Opera production of 2008 (Accord, 11/09) is still gripping to watch, but for an audio-only Jeanne d’Arc, look no further.