Der Königssohn is the standout work here; I can’t find an earlier recording. Schumann composed it in the first flush of fulfilling his new duties as director of the orchestra and choir in Düsseldorf. It’s a choral ballad of bardic legend, a setting of “German Longfellow” Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862). Bruckner (in Helgoland) and Richard Strauss (Taillefer) set Uhland as well, and his words drew from them work in their most potboiling vein. Schumann himself noted that “Der Königssohn is well suited to massed performance, for it consists largely of folk choruses” – which the scholar John Daverio construes not altogether convincingly as of intentional banality. It stands in relation to Das Paradies und die Peri rather as The Banner of St George does to Gerontius.

Still, if you’re not allergic to Schumann’s grand but maligned orchestration and cyclical patterns, you may take great pleasure both from the piece and this spirited performance. Kent Nagano could perhaps have done more to paper over the cracks between sections – he is more at ease with the crackling urgency of Mendelssohn’s tribute to pagan ritual – but he marshals with efficiency the acculturated instrumental voices of the Bavarian State Orchestra and the much fresher response of the 80-strong Audi Jugendchorakademie within a generous but not overbearing church acoustic.

The other two secular choral works here are better known (for good reasons), but the Audi choir yields little to more-distinguished competitors on disc. The small solo parts are taken with authority, but younger voices – step-outs from the choir, perhaps – would have fitted better with the corporate nature of these works from a lost and almost forgotten tradition.