Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená believes it is ‘impossible to draw a line between the religious and the personal’. It’s a philosophy shared by composers throughout the 19th century, whose music moved freely from church to home and concert hall. ‘Prayer’ stretches this idea into a programme of sacred song for voice and organ that encompasses Lieder by Schubert and Wolf, Bach chorales, songs by Ravel and Purcell, and church music by Duruflé, Dvořák and Verdi.

Kožená’s is a broad musical church, but vocally (and with the aid of organist Christian Schmitt’s elegant transcriptions) she makes it work. While concert-hall appearances recently have revealed some issues – a thinness to her vocal tone, a certain raggedness at the top of her range – back in the studio Kožená is on solid ground. Her Wolf is particularly luscious – never overworked but always emotionally direct, establishing the same flexible intimacy with the organ that we’d expect with a piano. Her covered middle and lower registers dissolve delicately into cloudy organ registrations, a musical coup de théâtre that also works well in Duruflé’s Notre Père.

Adapting less naturally to its new world, Bizet’s Agnus Dei (a posthumous arrangement performed at the composer’s funeral) feels a little polite, lacking the spiritual bombast the music craves. And at the other extreme, Purcell’s The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation isn’t quite as light on its feet as it needs to be if it is to keep up with the composer’s mercurial mood-swings.

But these are quibbles. Kožená sings superbly here, proving herself as flexible stylistically as vocally.