Considering the sheer amount of French Baroque repertoire on disc these days, it seems odd that it has taken so long for Pierre Robert to make an appearance; even the ensemble named after him has not recorded any of his music yet. Still, it is no less appropriate that the present performers should be the ones to break the silence, since Olivier Schneebeli’s choir of children and adults was formed specifically to recreate the sound world of Louis XIV’s court chapel, the very place where in the 1660s and ’70s Robert made his name alongside the currently much more recorded Henry Dumont as a co-creator of the grand motet.

There are four of these here, all substantial psalm-settings for choir, stand-out soloists and orchestra. Te decet hymnus and Nisi Dominus are cheerful pieces, the former dignified at the start but rising to unreserved cries of “clamabunt” at the end, the latter echoing its opening words (“Except the Lord build the house”) with what seems like an aural picture of a swarming building site. Robert’s penchant for strikingly frank setting of individual words or phrases gives his music more intimate expression than the grand tableaux of a Lully or a Lalande, and is shown to good effect in two works of considerable power and seriousness, the plangent and humble De profundis and the nervous and unsettling Quare fremuerunt gentes.

The recording was made at concerts in the Royal Chapel at Versailles, and, though there are a few noises off, copes well with the ample acoustic, combining textural clarity with an appropriate sense of space. The performances themselves are stylish, accomplished and heartfelt, enough to make an auspicious introduction to an unjustly neglected composer. The informative booklet-notes appear in English but the sung texts do not, so keep a Bible to hand.