The wrench from the twilit opening movement of the Requiem to the foursquare sequences of the “Te decet hymnus”, from the alto’s yearning “Qui Mariam absolvisti” to the unconvinced insistence of “Confutatis maledictis”, encapsulates the problems with Schumann’s late music that are unlikely to vanish however persuasive the interpreters. This disc shows how those problems are more focused in his specifically sacred works than in those which spring from a spiritual impulse in one who confessed himself “religious without a religion”. Light and enlightenment were vital symbols for Schumann and the Nachtlied of 1849 evokes a kind of dawn of the soul with the acute sensibility that only fitfully illuminates the Requiem (and Mass) of 1852. The later works were composed to order for the ensembles of Düsseldorf whose direction Schumann ill-advisedly agreed to undertake; so too were the four choral ballads of 1851 but their bardic subject matter – in Der Königssohn, a young man’s rite of passage towards his kingly inheritance – seems to have summoned the poetic impulse we associate with the best of Schumann.

Such varied demands are met here with patchy success. The soloists lend distinction, especially Christoph Prégardien as the young king-to-be, and Georg Grün’s flexible direction doesn’t undermine the pulse that each movement needs if it’s to sustain any impression of coherence, but his Saarbrucken ensembles don’t match the polish of the comparative versions listed above. There are one or two coughs but no indication in the booklet that the recording, in a large and boomy church in Trier, was made live.