Poulenc performance practice, at least in this recording, has evolved well beyond the dry but clear sonorities heard in many performances from the 1950s and ’60s that were either supervised by the composer or made with the benefit of breathing the same air. Here in the Stabat mater, the NDR Choir sounds far bigger and churchier than usual, giving this piece a more secure place next to the great concert choral works from Berlioz to Verdi.

Profundity that’s usually conveyed through an elegant lightish touch benefits from Stéphane Denève’s heavier hand and more formidable utterance, with the music’s intent fully internalised and translated into a larger sound envelope. The music takes on even more fury in the text’s descriptions of the Virgin Mary’s anguish. Dissonances become spine-tingling. Greater monastic weight marks descriptions of the Crucifixion – though the odd, abbreviated endings in several movements seem a tad more odd when what precedes them is so much more emphatic. The high standard of singing and playing (including soprano soloist Marlis Petersen) makes this viewpoint fully realised and completely convincing.

Les biches, Poulenc’s Stravinskian ballet score, arrives complete rather than in the more typical concert suite that misrepresents the original as being predominantly breezy and chic. Well, it’s not. With choral duties handled by the theatrical SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, the seldom-heard sections have an impolite primitivism, more fearlessly outside-the-box than you’d expect from Poulenc at any stage of his career. Was he also attempting to inspire Stravinskian outrage? I strongly recommend hearing it yourself.