Album: Brahms, Symphony No 3 / Choral Works (Soli Deo Gloria)

Odd in the extreme when heard live, the super-sweet timbre of The Monteverdi Choir's high tenors and sopranos is sublime in this recording from two performances in Paris and London.

Sublime too is the harp and horn playing in "Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang", and the audacious attack of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique's strings in "Gesang der Parzen".

This is the amuse-bouche for John Eliot Gardiner's stirring reading of Brahm's Third: an account of remarkable textural clarity but deeply idiosyncratic changes of tempo.