Recordings of the Missa choralis (1865) are thin on the ground. The current benchmark is Matthew Best’s on Hyperion, coupled with Liszt’s Via Crucis. Both new versions offer serious competition and it may well be the different pairings that inform your choice. The Gewandhaus Choir (a semi-professional ensemble that ‘rehearses twice a week with c50 ambitious singers’, so the booklet tells us) inserts into the Mass two excerpts from Christus, and two from the Missa pro organo transcribed by Liszt in 1879 from his 1848 Mass for organ and male choir. The ‘service’ is bookended by an organ introit Liszt added in 1884 and the papal hymn he composed in 1863 for Pope Pius IX. The venue is one which Liszt knew well. The mighty 1855 Ladegast organ of Merseburg cathedral, restored in 2004, was the instrument used for the premieres of several of his major organ works. Its discreet support, the fine choir, which celebrated its sesquicentenary in 2011, and the richly atmospheric acoustic are all beautifully captured in a recording that hardly lacks for authenticity.

Tempi in the Missa choralis are much in line with Best’s Corydon Singers. Those of the Académie Vocale de Suisse Romande under the joint direction of Renaud Bouvier and Dominique Tille are uniformly brisker but with little loss of the ethereal and contemplative so imaginatively realised by Gregor Meyer and his Gewandhaus singers. The smaller (17) forces in the more intimate surroundings of the French Church in Berne deliver the text with exemplary clarity and sensitivity. The organist is Benjamin Righetti, whose transcription of Liszt’s B minor Piano Sonata opens the disc. This is no mere tour de force (though it is certainly that) but a completely convincing transfer from one medium to another in which a cohesive narrative and the orchestral colours suggested by the original are uncannily – and effortlessly – conjured on the splendid 1828 Bossart/1991 Goll organ. For instance, where you might expect Liszt’s fff pesante to be realised by using the full organ, Righetti instead chooses a powerful, dark-hued combination of 16ft and 8ft stops. It’s a terrific disc altogether and one which illustrates more concisely than any in the past year the two complementary sides of Liszt’s genius.