At just over an hour, this excellent performance is some 12 minutes shorter than recent issues under Tennstedt (BBC Legends) and Nézet-Séguin (LPO, 8/10), but it never sounds rushed. Norrington’s speeds are about the same as Marin Alsop’s – with one notable exception, his reading of ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’ taking a good minute longer. As we have come to expect, Sir Roger applies early music practice to his modern-instrument interpretation: the opening phrase of the first movement sounds almost as though played by viols rather than cellos. The introduction to ‘Denn alles Fleisch’ is light, staccato rather than the marked legato, ma un poco marcato, but the choral restatement packs plenty of weight.

The harp sounds unnaturally prominent in places but perhaps there are two of them. In general, Norrington has a knack of drawing out detail that other conductors overlook. The minatory horn and trumpet calls at the beginning of ‘Herr, lehre doch mich’ seem to anticipate the Last Judgement; and when did you last notice the second horn’s downward arpeggio at the reprise of ‘Wie lieblich’? The fp accents in the strings a few seconds earlier are equally noteworthy, and Norrington is scrupulously attentive to the hairpin dynamics of ‘Denn wir haben hie’.

To judge by the photographs in the booklet, the combined choirs number about 50. They meet all the work’s demands admirably, delicate or full-throated as required. As already suggested, the orchestra responds to their Conductor Laureate with enthusiastic subtlety. Fine soloists, too, with Florian Boesch conveying barely suppressed terror in his first solo.