Cherubini cannily steered a safe course through politically turbulent times, whether he was performing for Marie Antoinette at Versailles, responding artistically to the post-Revolutionary fervour that led to the Reign of Terror, coping with ups and downs during the Napoleonic years or becoming a musical figurehead of the restored monarchy. Clytemnestre (1794) depicts the evolving moods of Clytemnestra as she blissfully anticipates Iphigenia’s marriage to Achilles, but then reacts with vengeful distress at Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter before the Greek fleet sails for Troy. Maïlys de Villoutreys’s limpid singing conveys Clytemnestra’s softer side serenely (‘Plein de la tendre impatience’) and in the cantata’s climax characterises her as a vulnerable victim of the Gods; the Kölner Akademie adroitly juggle the contrasting textures and moods of Cherubini’s score.

Michael Alexander Willens also conducts subtly contoured performances of three choruses that Cherubini provided as incidental music for Pujoulx’s play La mort de Mirabeau (1791); vivid outpourings of grief (plenty of trombones in minor keys) flank a gentle prayer for hope that is adorned by lyrical woodwind (‘Espérons encore’). Amphion (written in 1786 but unperformed) and Circé (1789) were both composed for the masonic Loge Olympique (the same concert society to whom Haydn sent his ‘Paris’ Symphonies): Ursula Eittinger eloquently describes the forlorn Circe lamenting the departure of Ulysses (trombones rasp boldly in an agitated illustration of the sorceress’s self-immolation), whereas the radiantly optimistic overture to Amphion hints at why Beethoven praised Cherubini as the world’s greatest living composer.