Jean-Rudolf Kars’ parents were Viennese Jews but he grew up in France, part of the same generation as Jean-Philippe Collard and Pascal Rogé. He converted to Catholicism in 1976 (three years after touring Australia for the ABC) and became a priest in 1983. On the strength of these discs, the priesthood’s gain was music’s loss.

One CD contains Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and also the D.946 Klavierstücke. This is Schubert at his most profound, simultaneously radiating Biedermeier exquisiteness, under the shadow of imminent death. Kars’ readings are searching, charming and poignant. His second CD contains both books of Debussy’s Préludes, beautifully played, if a little slower than we’re accustomed to today (The Submerged Cathedral must be somewhere in the Mariana Trench). His Messiaen excerpts from Twenty Contemplations of the Christ Child and the Catalogue of Birds underscore the extent to which Messiaen was Debussy’s spiritual successor. Kars’ renditions are wonderfully extrovert and joyful, emphasising the ecstatic side of Messiaen.

Dame Gillian Weir, perhaps the most ardent champion of Messiaen’s organ output, performs previously unissued works including the epic Les Corps glorieux – Sept Visions brèves de la Vie des Ressuccités “The Bodies in Glory – Seven Brief Visions of the life of...