The classic recording, under the guidance of István Kertesz (Decca, 10/69), is now 50 years old and rather shows its age in the odd shifts of acoustic between larger and smaller works, cruelly revealed by digital sound. The new disc – of a slightly different selection of works – revels in fine BIS sound and the organ for the songs thus accompanied is more reasonably scaled (and tootles along terrifically). The tenor John Heuzenroeder matches and even surpasses Werner Krenn (for Kertesz) in ardency, although Tom Krause was luxury casting on the older disc, leaving Mario Borgioni somewhat standing.

The gems include the cantatas Die Maurerfreude, with virtuoso solos for oboe and clarinet, and the lusty Laut verkünde unsre Freude, Mozart’s last completed work, written during composition of the Requiem and conducted by the composer in a period of remission from his final illness. The masterpiece, however, is the Masonic Funeral Music, and here Kertesz trumps Willens, who opts for a hypothetical version with male choir intoning the central Lamentations chant, as reconstructed by Philippe Autexier in the 1980s and championed by Philippe Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi, 9/92). Kertesz, on the other hand, performs what is supposedly the ‘third version’, untexted but complete with three basset-horns and contrabassoon, and heroic horncalls that could rouse a Valkyrie to flight. Also included here, although not specifically Masonic, are four Sturm und Drang entr’actes from the incidental music to Thamos, König in Ägypten, played with requisite fire.

Quite apart from the pleasure this music gives, one spots premonitions in much of it of later styles: some of the choral music audibly sits between the Salzburg ‘church’ style of, say, the Coronation Mass and the darker tone of the Requiem, while the songs especially find their verse structures echoed in The Magic Flute – the Masonic work par excellence. Recommended with a handshake.