This compilation juxtaposes a selection of short choral pieces by two late Romantics, Max Reger and Rudolf Tobias, born in the same year, 1873, and, alas, both destined to shortened lives, Reger dying in 1916 and Tobias two years later. The programme consists of predominantly slow, contemplative music, though expertly written for mixed voices and deeply satisfying to the ear.

A significant pioneer in Estonian music, Tobias composed the first ‘Estonian’ symphonic piece (the Julius Caesar Overture of 1896), a piano concerto (Concertstück, 1897) and a powerful oratorio (Des Jona Sendung, ‘Jonah’s Mission’, 1909). Trained at the St Petersburg Conservatory, he worked as the organist of the Estonian St John’s Church in the city before moving to Berlin in 1908, where he taught at the Royal Academy of Music, acquiring German citizenship in 1914. Stylistically, he is a sort of Baltic Bairstow (who was born just a year after Tobias), transcendental without being revolutionary, intimate, not vain, and highly responsive to text and atmosphere.

Reger, by contrast, favours more luxuriant textures, with the result that the balance is a little top-heavy at times for the basses. However, the Estonian choristers relish the curvaceous lines of the Op 6 songs and the soaring Abendlied. The melting harmonies of Tobias’s Otsekui hirv (‘Like as the hart’) are dispatched with equal pleasure, accompanied with great sensitivity by organist Ene Salumäe, who also contributes a welcome solo by both composers. This attractive disc concludes with the stirring Eks teie tea, Tobias’s best-known composition.