Anyone expecting anticipations of Janácek’s masterpiece of 1926, the Glagolitic Mass, in these earlier, less ambitious choral pieces will be disappointed, but in their own right they have a freshness typical of the composer. Many of them were written for choirs that Janácek conducted in his earlier years, using a relatively conventional idiom, even though characteristically his key-changes are often adventurous, and his love of repeated ostinato figures comes out too.

The title of the collection, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, is taken from the most ambitious piece here, a setting in Czech (Otcenas) which in effect is a compact cantata in six brief movements. In this recording, made in the spacious acoustic of Christ Church Cathedral, Stephen Darlington draws refined singing from his choir, very English in timbre with fluting trebles. He seems to translate this Czech piece into the Anglican tradition even more than his Cambridge rivals on disc, King’s College under Stephen Cleobury (EMI, 2/89) and Gonville and Caius College under Geoffrey Webber (ASV, 6/95). The mature Janácek is most clearly and impressively heard in the final section, ‘Lead us not into Temptation’ (track 1, 14'25") in a vigorous motif on organ and piano which leads into the choral Amen.

The short settings of Latin texts tend to be the most traditional, but the Elegie, setting a poem of Maria Veverica, written when Janácek’s daughter had just died, is both moving and original with its long piano introduction. The two pieces entitled Ave Maria are quite different from each other, the first for male voices setting a text from Byron’s Don Juan, the second and more ambitious setting the text of the traditional prayer in Czech. As in The Lord’s Prayer the tenor soloist (Andrew Carwood responsive but unflatteringly recorded) is set in contrast against the choir, with violin and piano accompaniment. Most fascinating of all is the setting of the Mass which Janácek ingeniously fitted to Liszt’s so-called Mass for organ. The voices seem to be set at a slight distance in the reverberant acoustic, but this is a most refreshing issue.