The major work here is Frank Martin's incandescent Mass (1922, rev 1926), written as “an affair between me and God”, as he once put it, and withdrawn for decades after its first performance. Its restrained intensity has proved attractive to choirs and audiences in concert and on disc, with some fierce competition among the dozen versions commercially available, the benchmark remaining the 1998 Gramophone Record of the Year by Westminster Cathedral Choir under James O'Donnell.

The Kansas City Chorale and Phoenix Bach Choir are two separate ensembles but share their artistic director, Charles Bruffy. For beauty of tone, they can match these illustrious forebears and the warm Chandos sound suits them to perfection. However, Bruffy's slow tempi may not appeal to all; most performances average around 26 minutes but this newcomer passes 30 and at times the reverentially executed textures blur the contours of Martin's polyphony.

Bruffy's treatment of Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's moving Canticum calamitatis maritimae (1997), a memorial to the victims of the 1994 Estonia ferry disaster, is similarly slow-paced, lasting three minutes longer than either rival. The Tapiola Chamber Choir, for which Mäntyjärvi regularly sings, remain definitive interpreters but there's no denying the impact of Bruffy's approach. In René Clausen's In pace and Frank Ticheli's hushed There will be rest (2000, commemorating the death of a child) they have the field to themselves and their well drilled and beautifully balanced singing prove deeply satisfying. The first of a series of joint ventures by these choirs; future instalments will be well worth hearing.