Metropolitan status is not really appropriate: ‘The Wimpole Street Version’ would do better. It was there, in 1871, at the home of a leading surgeon and his musical wife, that the first performance in London of Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem was given, two years before the work was introduced to the British public at large and with orchestral scoring. The arrangement for accompaniment by piano duet was the composer’s own, made at the urgent request of his publisher. The London connection came about through Julius Stockhausen, baritone soloist in the German première of 1868 and friend of Sir William and Lady Thompson in Wimpole Street.

There the occasion was essentially a domestic one, with a small invited audience, piano duettists (one of whom was the lady of the house) and singers who, having sung of all flesh being grass, would doubtless have found cold meats laid out for them in the dining room and a glass of wine to refresh the spirits.

The great difference between this new recording and its predecessor on the Opus 111 label is that it successfully presents the Requiem as chamber music. The earlier performance suggested a final piano rehearsal, the orchestra being expected next week. With the exception of No 4 (‘Wie lieblich’), the accompaniments sounded unpianistic, and the habitual accompaniment of even those phrases which the choir are scored to have on their own strengthened this sense of a functional rather then an artistic event. The present performance eliminates this doubling, and, with the piano part played on two instruments, achieves a far more satisfying degree of musical finish. The pianists play sensitively, with a singing tone most of the time and with a keen ear for the differentiation between parts or melodic strands.

The older recording had soloists who were both famous and very good – Soile Isokoski and Andreas Schmidt. The new one has Sandrine Piau, clear-toned and well in control after a very slightly tremulous start, and Stéphane Degout, a fine baritone, not particularly expressive here but admirable in quality and phrasing. The choir sing with fresh, well-matched tones and care for detail. Choice of tempo seems unerringly right and that is but one of many reasons we have to be grateful to Laurence Equilbey, the conductor.