Sven-David Sandström (b1942) has created a wealth of choral music, secular – as in the Blake setting A Cradle Song/The Tyger (Phono Suecia) – and sacred, such as the lovely hymn Ave maris stella which opens this issue. Of the two unorthodox Mass settings, the Freedom Mass (1996) is one almost in name only, the bulk of the text deriving from poems by Tomas Tranströmer with the familiar Latin section titles sung purely as markers at the head or tail of individual movements. Yet there is a deeply spiritual atmosphere to this often gentle music that may surprise those familiar only with Sandström’s more abrasive works.

The Mass scorings are unconventional: chorus, brass quintet and organ feature in both, with soprano and clarinet in the Freedom and reciter, congregation and second organ in the exuberant Ordinary Mass with Psalm (1992). This latter is more diverse stylistically, nodding towards New Simplicity in some of its choral writing early on (that in the Psalm is positively hokey) and to older models in that for the brass, especially in the initial – separately performable – Procession Music.

Only the texts for the Freedom Mass are provided so it is unclear how much of the reciter’s role in the Ordinary Mass has been omitted (the scriptural reading specified in the score seems to be absent), as is the identity of the Psalm (Stig Jacobsson’s notes are no help here): it is ‘O Guds lamm’. The singing and playing, though, are excellent throughout, as is the Caprice sound.