The comparative rarity here is the Sept Répons de Ténèbres that Poulenc wrote in 1961 to a commission from Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. The music manifests the familiar Poulenc fingerprints of perfumed harmony, sensual melody and abrupt cadences but there is a fiercer, more troubled personality at work here as well. The dark import of the Tenebrae Responsories seems to have struck a particular chord with Poulenc nearing the end of his life, and here the chromatic twists in, for instance, the ‘Caligaverunt oculi mei a fletu meo’ (My eyes are darkened by my tears) suggest an anguish in the face of mortality that is both powerful and poignant. Poulenc wanted all male voices for the Sept Répons, with (as in Bernstein’s soon-to-be-composed Chichester Psalms) a boy treble as a central protagonist, but here Carolyn Sampson eloquently expresses the isolation and apprehension of the solo line, and the mixed voices of the Cappella Amsterdam and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Reuss sensitively and dramatically project the sombre, fearful, abject world in which Poulenc finds himself.

Theirs is also a fine performance of the Stabat mater. Again, Poulenc was confronted with death, that of his friend Christian Bérard, but grief, serenity and tenderness coalesce to a greater degree here than in the Sept Répons des Ténèbres. The choir and orchestra rise fully to the eruptions of emotion in the ‘Quis est homo’ but are no less compelling in quiet moments of contemplation.