Unlike several of the Mass settings Haydn made late in life for Prince Esterházy, Beethoven did not subtitle his C major Mass ‘in tempore belli’ – in time of war – when fulfilling the same commission in 1807. Yet he could have done so – Beethoven was writing it at the height of the Fourth Napoleonic War, and with at least one of Haydn’s Masses to hand for reference – and Mariss Jansons conducts the kind of emphatic and grandly scaled performance that, in looking forward to the Missa solemnis more than back to Haydn, implies that he should have done.

Having reduced the forces of his Bavarian orchestra for the Trumpet Concerto of Hummel – who fulfilled commissions for Esterházy with rather greater success than Beethoven – Jansons elects to fill the stage again; perhaps to match the Bavarian Radio Chorus at full strength, or to complement the opening Stravinsky item on a programme designated as his 75th birthday concert, which really is a symphony composed in time of war. Instrumental colours are bright, exact and assertive. Were there a slider for musical rather than picture contrast, it would be set at maximum.

Yet a besetting impassiveness pervades not only Martin Angerer’s impeccably fluid and assured account of the Hummel. Among a mellifluously blended team of vocal soloists in the Mass, only Gerhild Romberger offers something extra, something urgent and personal in her entreaty of ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’. At a conservative tempo, the Symphony’s opening themes switch between glaring brutality and febrile anxiety, but the ‘swung’ third theme falls flat, and the development section is becalmed in sequential repetition (diminishing returns likewise afflict the closing fugues of Beethoven’s Gloria and Credo). A balletic but oddly flippant approach to Stravinsky’s slow movement underplays its pathos, and the jazz-hands conclusion of the finale is more refined than raucous.

Beethoven insisted that the keynotes of his Mass were cheerfulness and gentleness, and these qualities are evident in a tenderly shaped Sanctus and Benedictus. On film, this performance has the field to itself – unless you have access to the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, where Nikolaus Harnoncourt (in his last appearance with the orchestra) employs similarly scaled and polished forces to markedly more stirring effect.