His tercentenary and its aftermath have shown how there is so much more to Leopold Mozart than silly sound-effect symphonies and overbearing fatherhood. A Missa solemnis issued last year (Aparté, 8/19) was long taken as the work of his son, and there is plenty in this charming Litany that shows why Wolfgang turned for musical guidance first to Leopold. It is very much in the Salzburg church style we hear in similar works by the young genius, despite a certain melodic ordinariness I noted in the Mass. It might have made a stronger impression were it not for the unavoidable feeling that the lion’s share of the rehearsal time went on the concert’s second half, as betrayed by some ragged entries and uncertainty among strings and choir.

The annual Salzburg Festival performance of the grand C minor Mass of Mozart fils is a fixture along the lines of Beethoven’s Ninth at Bayreuth or rudely deflating balloons at the Last Night of the Proms. It usually takes place at St Peter’s church, where it is thought to have been first heard in 1783; last year, however, it decamped to the city’s Mozarteum Foundation while the church was being titivated.

A further innovation is the use of a new edition, prepared by the Mozarteum’s director of research, Ulrich Leisinger. This not only reconstructs anew the eight-part writing in the Sanctus and Benedictus but, most importantly, provides the missing instrumental parts in the opening two movements of the Credo. (Unlike some other recent editions, no attempt is made to contrive music for the sections Mozart didn’t compose.) Thus the ‘Credo in unum Deum’ is bedecked with trumpets and drums, while the ‘Et incarnatus est’ is furnished with new string parts that provide a subtle bed for the glorious soprano cantilena with solo flute, oboe and bassoon.

The Mozarteum’s Grosser Saal unfortunately lacks the sort of church acoustic that would soften the sharper corners of the performance and perhaps efface the sibilance of ‘suscipe’ and ‘in excelsis’. The two sopranos acquit themselves well, with Marianne Beate Kielland agile in the ‘Laudamus te’ and Carolyn Sampson – a veteran of C minor Masses – radiant in the ‘Incarnatus’. Perhaps the tempo for the ‘Gloria’ is a tad careful; the ‘Credo’ shifts oddly in and out of focus; but the fugues at ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ and ‘Hosanna’ come off admirably.

The Camerata Salzburg field modern instruments but with natural trumpets and shallow timpani with hard sticks. Filming is not particularly imaginative – shots sometimes switch to sections just as they lower their instruments, for example – although the Mozarteum’s gilded organ is a delight. Not a Mass for the ages, perhaps, but a worthwhile opportunity to hear a new view of Mozart’s ‘other’ great (unfinished) sacred masterpiece.