The cantata Joseph, Mankind’s Blessing was composed for use in one of Vienna’s Masonic lodges during a period of tolerance, before Joseph II himself ‘rationalised’ most such establishments out of existence in the middle of the 1780s. It might be thought then to have outlived its usefulness but KoŽeluch was pleased enough with it to issue a version with piano accompaniment, which is available to view online. After an orchestral introduction, choruses and soprano arias alternate with a trio of melodramas (delivered in German by Siegfried Gohritz), in which musical passages are halted for the next line of text to be declaimed – perhaps, at the first performance(s), by the non-singing author of the text, Leopold Föderl.

Joseph is comparable with a handful of vocal works that Mozart provided for his lodge elsewhere in Vienna, although it’s on a bigger scale, with nine movements taking over half an hour to perform. It’s not as harmonically adventurous as Mozart and neither does it exploit the darker woodwind sounds that the Salzburger came to associate with Masonic themes. All the same, it’s a work of some charm, and an interesting sidelight on the activities of a composer known primarily for his instrumental works.

The slightly breathy Czech boys’ choir sound suitably devotional and patriotic here (if intonation falls a little short above the stave) and in a Mass that packs the whole long text into under 12 minutes of music, rather in the manner of some of Haydn’s earliest Masses. The soprano Simona Eisinger is adequate both in the cantata and in a pair of sacred arias that avoid coloratura yet call for a wide tessitura and a good deal of stamina. She also provides welcome advocacy to what may be the true find among this collection, a setting for soprano and harpsichord of a lament on the death of Joseph’s mother, the empress Maria Theresa. All together, a curio for those interested in the byways of music in Mozart’s Vienna.