Intended to be performed by choir and two organs, Vierne’s Messe solennelle is a spectacular setting of the Mass; that spectacle most powerfully conveyed in a 1987 recording (Motette, 10/89) in which Paris’s Sacre-Coeur offers up such an awesome dose of reverberation that, once the first chord has sounded, virtually nothing else on the disc is discernible. Ten years later Hyperion came up with a rather more vivid recording from Westminster Cathedral (4/97) where clarity led to only minimal loss of spectacle. Now it’s the turn of Regent which has not only moved into an altogether smaller building (although the Truro acoustic is warm and opulent) but taken away one of the organs, leaving the accompaniment in the exceptionally capable hands of Christopher Gray, now the cathedral’s director of music.

The loss of the spatial effect from the two organs is not so keenly felt as one might think, largely because the Regent sound is so impressive and the performance – this is Sharpe’s CD swansong at Truro – so persuasive. The choir, always impressive on disc, come up with a tangible sense of idiom, and while Sharpe’s four-square phrasing gives an uneasy stop-and-start feel to Vierne’s innocuous setting of the Ave Maria, elsewhere he sensibly lets the choir have their head, and the results are unfailingly enjoyable. This is singing which stands comparison with the best choirs around.

Sharpe’s own performances of the two Messes basse for organ solo show how Truro’s matchless Father Willis can speak French almost like a native, and these are affectionate and suitably devotional performances, the full range of the Truro organ superbly captured in Regent’s outstanding recording.

Les Angélus is unique in Vierne’s output, a sacred song-cycle accompanied on the organ. Logistics – the singer cannot easily be in close contact with her accompanist – not to say balance, renders this a difficult work to bring off. Possibly Monica Brett-Crowther is a little too full-voiced and, at times, operatic, to convey the “unpretentious emotional appeal” to which the extensive booklet-notes refer, and the organ does seem to keep itself very much in the background, but these are nevertheless captivating performances of a fascinating work and provide a valuable addition to this first ever survey of Vierne’s complete output of sacred music for voices.