‘Exsultate jubilate!’ was also the title of a recording by Carolyn Sampson in 2006. Her disc, an Editor’s Choice that May, coupled the motet with a range of other sacred works. Karine Deshayes places it among a slightly different selection, although the Agnus Dei of the Coronation Mass and the ‘Laudate Dominum’ from the Solemn Vespers are common to both albums; and her co-conspirators, Les Paladins and Jérôme Correas, leaven the mix with a range of instrumental works.

Even the similarities are not as close as they may appear: Deshayes offers the familiar original version of Exsultate, while Sampson opted for the later version, in which the recitative sets a different text and serene flutes replace piquant oboes. Both offer a curtailed K317 Agnus, shorn of its choral ‘Dona nobis’, but Deshayes also omits the choral section of the ‘Laudate’, which Sampson (and The King’s Consort’s associated choir) include.

Les Paladins set out their stall in the introduction to an aria from the 1771 ‘azione sacra’ Betulia liberata, exhibiting an edge to the string tone and conspicuous natural horns, their intonation deliciously on the ripe side. The Neapolitan busyness of the aria continues into a 1772 symphony and the ‘Laudamus’ from the 1782 C minor Mass, here heard in its retexted version, ‘Lungi le cure ingrate’, prepared in 1785 for the ‘psalm’ Davide penitente. There is also a handful of church sonatas, little sweetmeats of unclouded charm, performed with a grin and a wink.

Deshayes boasts a more consciously ‘operatic’ voice than Sampson in this music, ornamenting freely in the Agnus and demonstrating a fine mezzo extension in the Betulia and Davide arias. The curtailed ‘Laudate Dominum’, though, is an oddly inconclusive way to finish. I wonder why, for example, ‘Tra l’oscure ombre funeste’, newly composed for Davide, wasn’t preferred.