Ivor Bolton’s survey of unfamiliar and familiar Fauré examines his sacred music for its third instalment, placing the Requiem and Cantique de Jean Racine alongside a trio of rarities of uneven quality. The prelude with chorus La Passion, composed in 1890 and measured in its solemnity, is all that remains of projected incidental music for a sacred drama by Edmond Haracourt, intended for Sarah Bernhardt, but seemingly banned before it went into rehearsal. The setting of Psalm 136, dating from Fauré’s École Niedermeyer years, is ambitious (four soloists, mixed choir, large orchestra) if derivative, recalling Berlioz in some places and Saint-Saëns, Fauré’s teacher, in others.

The Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville for female voices and chamber ensemble, meanwhile, is a genuine curiosity with an unusual history. It was co-written by Fauré and André Messager in 1881 to raise money for a local fishermen’s charity, when the two composers, close friends, were on holiday together in Normandy, and reorchestrated (by Messager) for a second fundraising performance a year later. You’re very aware of its divided authorship, with Messager’s expansive elegance in the Kyrie and ‘O salutaris’ contrasting with Fauré’s more reflective approach to Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The problem here, though, is Fauré’s Gloria, which has a rushed quality at odds with the rest of the score: significantly perhaps, when he came to rework some of his own material in the Messe basse of 1907, he omitted the Gloria altogether.

As with the previous discs, the performances are for the most part strong, with the Balthasar Neumann Choir, who featured briefly in the first instalment, now taking centre stage. There’s fine choral singing throughout, grandly majestic in the Psalm, hushed and wonderfully introverted in the Cantique, with some beautiful dynamic shading in the Messe des pêcheurs and the soft high soprano and tenor lines in the Requiem immaculately sustained. For some reason, however, 19th-century French-Latin pronunciation (with ‘u’ as in ‘tu’ and some vowels nasalised) is used for the Psalm and Mass before the choir reverts to standard pronunciation for the Requiem.

Using the 1900 score of the latter, Bolton gives us a reined-in interpretation, notably severe at the start and with a sudden rasp of genuine fear in the ‘Dies irae’ section of the Libera me. Benjamin Appl sounds very consolatory in the Offertorium, so that the shift from minor to major that follows is genuinely magical. Katja Stuber is less than ideally steady in the Pie Jesu, though, and is heard to better advantage in the more operatic vocal writing of the Psalm, where she leads an excellent quartet of soloists. Responses to the Requiem are ultimately personal: this is good, but I much prefer Mathieu Romano’s recording with the Ensemble Aedes and Les Siècles (Aparté, 6/19), a noble if stark interpretation, utterly uncompromising in its austerity.