Rautavaara wrote the Credo for his Missa a cappella in 1972, adding the five movements to make a full Ordinary 40 years later. It’s tempting to say that the Mass is an odd stylistic mixture as a result, but in truth the Credo covers a lot of stylistic ground on its own and there are moments in the Sanctus that sound like Rautavaara of Isle of Bliss vintage. The work is best when not weighed down by the narrative texts: in the fluttering Kyrie, the tectonic Benedictus and in the plain weave and harmonic delicacy of the Agnus Dei. The influence of plainsong, 20th-century French Mass settings and the Baltic Russian axis make themselves felt. This is an aromatic Mass that more choirs should use liturgically.

Lotta Wennäkoski is a distinguished Finnish composer whose Flounce opened the Last Night of the 2017 Proms. Her works have a Nordic tendency to drill down into a single idea, which Ommel does: it is a word game that translates an eighth-century Japanese poem into five languages in order to let the sound of the languages inform the shape of its five chapters. The score is never outlandish without being focused, and the exploration of linguistics clearly leads Wennäkoski to explore extreme vocal capabilities but only within the parameters of the task. A curious piece but a valuable one.

The highlight comes from Italian born, Finnish resident Paula Livorsi, whose Lamenti is a giant four phase lament that starts with the deconstruction of a smaller four-chord one. The music slows, distils and disappears into breath at one point; at another it slips microtonally into the abyss. But all is not lost, as the voices find hope in Lorca’s ‘Poema del cante jondo’. Here more than anywhere, Nils Schweckendiek’s Helsinki Chamber Choir sound exceptional in their holding of cloud-like chords with precision tuning and timbral atmosphere, even in the rather dry acoustic of an Espoo chapel. It ends an undoubtedly odd programme, in which the two more incidental works by Rauvataara and Wennäkoski might have made way for something more fitting by one or the other.