Reicha's Der neue Psalm dates from 1807, and is very much a piece of its period. Though the text is not, regrettably, included here, it is a poem by one Siegfried Mahlmann taking as its basis the Lord's Prayer for a series of meditations. These are laid out for four soloists, chorus and orchestra, and rise to a climax with a final ''Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory''. It is, as one would expect from the skilled and revered teacher of Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod and Franck, music grounded on solid classical skills, with acknowledgement of the strength of Bach and the baroque; there is little to suggest the rising tide of romanticism, rather less than in the greatest of some of Haydn's slightly earlier Masses, whose idiom it reflects without any suggestion of the genius. The work seems not to have been performed in Reicha's lifetime, and has been edited from the autograph for this recording by Stanislav Ondracek. The performance under Lubomir Matl is scrupulous and serves well a work that is hardly likely ever to be more than a curiosity.'