This is a strangely unbalanced CD, opening with great vitality with the vivid brass of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra heralding Hindemith’s colourful setting of medieval Latin poems, Apparebit repentina dies, and closing with an almost deathly pallor in the Agnus Dei of the Mass. It also traverses a wide stylistic and chronological chasm, from the light, almost folksy settings of Hindemith’s first music for unaccompanied chorus – the Songs on Old Texts of 1923 – to the austere anguish of the Mass, his last musical utterance, composed just weeks before his death in 1963.

What draws these disparate strands so effectively together is the excellent singing of the SWR Vocal Ensemble under Marcus Creed. The crisp textures of the Songs on Old Texts have a delightful buoyancy, while the ebullient but fiendishly difficult ‘Landsknechtstrinklied’ is delivered with unerring clarity and precision. Against this, the richly harmonised settings of Rainer Maria Rilke in the Six Chansons have much warmth and expressiveness.

The Mass is something of an exception in Hindemith’s output, being his only venture into the realms of the church’s liturgy. This might suggest a late-life conversion to the Catholic faith – an idea effectively pooh-poohed by Heinz-Jürgen Winkler’s booklet-notes – and its austere character probably accounts for its rare outings on CD (the only other version I have ever encountered is a long-since deleted disc on Globe from the Netherlands Chamber Choir – 5/96). Generally, Hindemith’s choral music has been given scant coverage on disc, so this release, performed with real polish and recorded in a suitably generous acoustic by Hänssler Classic, is a valuable addition to the catalogue.