The 70-odd singers of the MDR Leipzig Radio Choir and the city’s Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche provide an authoritative ‘home’ response to a growing number of ‘away’ team recordings of Mendelssohn’s unaccompanied choral music.

Over the past 15 years we’ve seen the choirs of both Trinity and St John’s College, Cambridge, as well as the Corydon Singers tackling this repertoire, alongside an impressive overview from the Kammerchor Stuttgart and Frieder Bernius. Now Philipp Ahmann and his larger forces step up with a judicious selection of works: music from the composer’s Die deutsche Liturgie (including the Missa brevis), the three Op 78 Psalm Motets, the two Op 115 Latin Sacred Choruses and the mighty Three Motets, Op 69. There’s also a bonus, the premiere recording of a tiny Heilig for eight voices.

The latter (presented as an encore) is a treat: a musical sunrise spreading upwards through the voices in ever-expanding and thickening harmonic arcs, stern unisons contrasted with hazy homophonic glow. The meat of the programme is no less satisfying; Ahmann’s larger forces really make their case against so many chamber recordings of this repertoire. With more weight to play with, Ahmann keeps articulation restrained, liturgical.

This is – mostly – not Elijah, and while the booklet essay (poorly translated from German) points to the composer’s ‘church dramaturgy’, highlighting the tug between concert hall and church in this period, we only rarely hear that conflict creep into the performances: vividly and deliciously present in the torments of ‘Mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen’ and again in the contrasting episodes of ‘Mein Herz erhebet Gott, den Herrn’.

The influence of Bach’s motets sings out from the Op 78 Psalms, their counterpoint crisply delineated, and the sweetness and simplicity of the group’s upper voices suits ‘Hebe deine Augen auf’ (‘Lift thine eyes’, as it would become) well. Soloists bring a welcome contrast to verse sections, finding light and shade in a recital that might span Latin Catholic anthems and Protestant liturgy but which displays a fairly consistent musical DNA. This recording has jumped to the top of my go-to pile for this repertoire.