The latest in Riccardo Muti’s sequence of Cherubini Masses is one of the least known, the eighth of the 11, in E major (so-described, though it starts in the minor). As so often with Cherubini, there are imaginative sections and whole movements alongside others in which inspiration seems to have temporarily dried up while the diligent master keeps on writing just the same. The opening Kyrie is a gentle, beautiful movement, in Cherubini’s most reflective manner, as is the fine Sanctus and especially the closing Agnus Dei, in which softly intoning horn phrases sustain a sense of peace invoked and received. These are on the whole sensitively sung and played. However, the fugal “Amen”, where skill overtakes idea, is not the only place where the chorus might have been grateful for an extra rehearsal. A graphic Credo, reminding one that Cherubini was one of the significant opera composers of the day, includes an extraordinary moment at “et resurrexit” when the risen Christ seems to be actually forcing the sepulchre. An unusual feature of the work is the inclusion of a beautiful setting of “O salutaris hostia”, words which Cherubini clearly treasured as he set them no fewer than eight times (though not identified, they are in fact the last two verses of a St Thomas Aquinas poem for Corpus Christi).

As fillers to what is quite a short work there are a mild antiphon and a rather duller eight-part motet with organ for the Catholic devotion known as the Seven Sorrows of Mary.