Those who know, or think they do, that the German Requiem can now offer up all its treasures in an hour or so will fancy that Yannick Nézet-Séguin has embarked on a fantasy trip back to Furtwängler-land. I found so many things to enjoy about this recording that I didn’t begrudge a single minute of the time spent to savour them. The live-ness, for one: moments such as the preparatory winding up and cathartic release of the third movement’s fugue simply wouldn’t happen, or work, in the studio. There is some coughing but no applause, and the Royal Festival Hall has somewhat miraculously gained ambience, or at least atmosphere, probably thanks to the tension carefully sustained by the interpretation, and more particularly by the performers. Each choral and instrumental line has its own distinctive texture, from a bass-line of unusual and earthy presence, through tangy violas, holding back on the vibrato but not so much so as to deprive the outer movements of warmth, tenors who enjoy themselves without overstepping bounds of taste, a first oboe having a night to remember, to unflinching and untiring sopranos.

Only in some of the score’s gentler moments such as the second movement’s interlude did I find a want of intimacy, or exaggerated bulges (“Sie gehen hin”, “Mein Leib und Seele’) where all the right things are being said but too insistently, and perhaps Elizabeth Watts works harder than she needs to reach the back of the hall, though she and her solo companions on cello and flute arrive at a most affecting resting-place. Among larger-scale German Requiems of recent times, only the DVD of Abbado in Vienna (ArtHaus Musik) reveals access to a comparable inwardness and splendour.