Detlev Glanert has form when it comes to giving an established topos a contemporary slant. Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch (2016) is imagined as a process of judgement taking place immediately after the painter’s death 500 years ago last year. There are 18 movements, the standard texts of the Mass Ordinary alternating with selections from the medieval manuscript collection Carmina Burana, each confronting Bosch with one of the seven sins. Glanert describes the result, for four soloists, chorus, semi-chorus, organ and orchestra, as ‘not an opera but an oratorio; an inward spectacle, like the St Matthew Passion’.

It’s a spectacle, that’s for sure. Glanert has wanted to dip his toes in the water of sacred (if not liturgical) music for some years but the result can sound a little like he’s over-indulging a tradition he admires, genuflecting a little too obviously in the polyphony of ‘Recordare’ and ‘Juste judex’. On the flipside, the spectacle comes when vivid texts prompt Glanert into having that bit too much textural fun with the orchestra for us to take the predicament of purgatory and judgement seriously.

Sure, that’s an old accusation and one many composers have survived. But next to some of his other works introduced to us by RCO Live, Glanert’s excitable and often wickedly irreverent post-Romantic voice seems caught in the headlights here in a way it absolutely isn’t when conveying the realist emotions of the opera house or symphony stage. When he sets up the taut musical machines of ‘Avarice’ and ‘Wrath’, Glanert can’t break theatrically out of them as he is wont. While the textures might excite, the ultimate journeys disappoint (and, in the case of the sins, often sound interchangeable).

Despite that, drop the needle at almost any point along this 80-minute journey – perhaps not the two Mass movements named above – and unless you’re the grumpiest of ideologists you’ll be engaged within seconds. Glanert knows how to pull at the ears and the performances here are unfailingly vivid, from the bellicose bass of Christof Fischesser in ‘Gluttony’ to the reptilian intertwining of soprano Aga Mikolaj and mezzo Ursula Hesse von den Steinen in ‘Sloth’. What appears to be a homage to the French ecclesiastical style – another anomaly – is beautifully realised, not least by the rippling fingers of organist Leo van Doeselaar.

It is good to have a recording of a major work from this ever-colourful composer, not least as it’s unlikely the piece will have a life outside Bosch’s anniversary year. But the very idea of one artist passing judgement on another – even in what is effectively a work of fiction – is one more way in which Glanert’s Requiem can appear a strange and occasionally presumptuous beast.