After the dazzling assurance of Les Talens Lyriques’ recent recording under Christophe Rousset (with the tautly blended pair of Sandrine Piau and Christopher Lowrey), here is a Stabat mater that almost seems as if it was conceived to counter Rousset’s calculated brilliance. If the core vocal presence is less alluring in this latest reading from Capriola di Gioia, there is a simplicity of utterance and spaciousness offering many agreeable perspectives in a touching if unspectacular reading.

It starts with Rousseau’s 18th-century claim that the opening is ‘the most perfect and moving duo that has ever flowed out of the pen of a musician’. Far removed from Les Talens’ tortured glow of human agony, Bart Naessens effects a studied objectivity with soft-hued arches of sound emerging from Amaryllis Dieltiens and Clint van der Linde, balanced by the tangy and lightly seasoned string-and-organ accompaniment of Capriola. The pacing often digs deep into the ritual of solemnity (how brave to suspend time on ‘O quam tristis et afflicta’) with the Virgin observed in her unimaginable grief, and latterly effective in the rebounding fervour of the soloists in ‘Fac ut ardeat’, where you can sense two colluding disciples burning with love.

If Pergolesi’s masterpiece exhibits an extended Italian repository of Baroque conceits – and how they abound in distilled dissonance, chromatism and balletic dramatic gesture – the performers are still left with many choices on how to sustain atmosphere in a number of quicksilver poetic reflections. Naessens may not have soloists with the same level of vocal élan as Rousset but both Dieltiens and van der Linde portray each verse with a refreshing lack of self-conscious representation of their texts, nowhere more than in the delicately projected devotions of ‘Sancta mater’.

This account of the Stabat mater is unlikely to rival those with glitzier singers (if that’s what you’re after) but the patiently unfolding narrative and unforced rhetoric deliver a version of disarming intimacy and expressive honesty. To be reminded in three movements of Caldara’s glorious oratorio Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo is a deeply satisfying bonus. The complete work was, temporarily, resurrected when it won a Gramophone Award in 1997 and it deserves to be better loved on this brief showing.