The premise of this intriguing project makes a certain intuitive sense. Stravinsky’s Mass was composed as a response to Machaut’s, so why not present them side by side? The notion is especially attractive because it prompts creative decisions of which performers nowadays might otherwise fight shy. Hence, some of the instruments used in the rest of the programme are pressed into service in Machaut’s polyphony; or again, since Stravinsky uses both choir and soloists, certain movements of Machaut are given to the former, others to the latter. On their own, these changes of plumage might seem wilful or fussy (Machaut’s Sanctus is performed, ‘Anonymous 4-style’, by female voices only), but here everything integrates within a larger programme that has its own logic. Stravinsky is cross-contaminated as well, in that La Tempête perform it with period instruments. In the mid-range the texture lacks a little clarity, but that seems a small price to pay for gamier timbres and a fruitfully off-centre acoustic experience. Both works already have a healthy discography – enough to satisfy the purists – so why not try something different?

Speaking of ‘gamy’, another basic performance decision has to do with vocal timbre: La Tempête cultivate the ‘orientalist’ style of singing in Machaut (its director, Simon-Pierre Bestion, namechecks Marcel Pérès in the accompanying interview). This exoticist approach links up nicely with the programme’s second pairing, where arrangements of the Cantigas de Santa Maria dialogue with French composer Maurice Ohana’s settings of the same texts. The two pairs cross-contaminate yet again through at times striking similarities between Ohana and Stravinsky. To my mind the comparison doesn’t consistently work in Ohana’s favour (a shame, for his was a very sympathetic creative vision), but again the whole programme is very much more than the sum of its parts. I suspect, incidentally, that it was devised with live performance in mind rather than the studio, for the Machaut is shorn of its Sanctus; still, it’s a small price to pay for imaginative creative licence. The performances are solid and characterful.