Brahms’s differing approach to the setting of secular and sacred texts is vividly demonstrated on these two discs. There is an opulence of expression and a level of harmonic imagination in the former which is almost wholly absent from the latter.

The disc of ‘Profane’ choral music opens with the gloriously colourful Op 112 Quartets – not, it has to be said, true choral pieces; but performed here with 28 voices rather than Brahms’s intended four and with Ellen Refstrup’s immaculate piano accompaniments, the richness of the writing is powerfully enhanced. With nods towards the earlier, and far better-known, Liebeslieder Waltzes, especially in the third song, these enormously enjoyable pieces date from the last decade of Brahms’s life and were his last secular choral works. In their own way, his first secular choral pieces are every bit as accomplished. Indeed, with their unusual scoring for harp and two horns, the Four Songs for Female Chorus, Op 17, rank as some of the most magical songs for women’s voices Brahms ever wrote.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of his first attempt to write sacred music for accompanied female voices. Ave Maria is horribly mundane and, as if in response to such dreary music, the women of Trinitatis Kantori seem to have great difficulty getting themselves up to pitch. This is the only lapse, however, and over both discs this Copenhagen-based chamber choir sing with wonderful clarity and precision, neatly but unfussily directed by their founder Per Enevold.

Interspersing Brahms’s solemn choral pieces with five of the 11 organ Chorale Preludes which, written on his deathbed, constitute Brahms’s last completed compositions, produces a most satisfying piece of programming on the ‘Sacred’ disc, despite the fact that none of the choral pieces actually uses these chorale melodies. For her part, Inge Bønnerup gives decidedly discreet performances on the organ of Copenhagen’s Trinitatis Kirke, studiously avoiding the use of any reeds (a particularly surprising omissionfrom No 10), but set beside Brahms’s own subdued and undemonstrative choral pieces, it all works wonderfully.

Although three different recording locations – all of them churches – were used for these two discs, the sound is uniformly clean and direct.