Marcus Bosch, the city of Aachen’s Generalmusikdirektor, favours brisk tempi in two concerted choral works from the final year or so of Mozart’s Salzburg church employment. String ensemble is generally solid, and wind and especially brass instruments are dapper and well spotlit. Dorothée Mields is radiant, and while none of her solo colleagues are in the same league, they combine as a mellifluous quartet. The problem is the chorus. They’re well drilled and supremely integrated into the orchestral texture – integrated to such an extent, in fact, that they are denied their central role in this music, becoming little more than another colour in the accompaniment. The Vespers are fine as far as they go; the Mass isn’t likely to prompt a radical reappraisal of my chosen recordings in The Gramophone Collection (11/06).

Mields is again centre stage in a useful Exsultate, jubilate, although some may prefer the “whiter” sound of a singer such as Emma Kirkby, given that the motet was composed expressly for a castrato – one Venanzio Rauzzini, who ended his days in Bath. The Vocapella Choir finally come into their own in the late Ave verum corpus, yet another reading that ignores Mozart’s two-in-a-bar instruction and delivers it in a sluggish four. I’m not sure who this disc is for, outside the mums and dads of the choir. There’s certainly nothing here to frighten the horses.