Following her fine set of the Brahms symphonies on Naxos with the LPO, Marin Alsop has here moved to Leipzig for the German Requiem. It’s a swift performance, well over 10 minutes shorter than the other CD performances I have to hand. Too swift, in places. In the first movement, the rising oboe phrase is so matter-of-fact as to be almost wooden. The sombre march of ‘Denn alles Fleisch’ – at 14 minutes, compared to Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s 17 – lacks weight. At a first hearing, Alsop seemed to skate over ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’, taken at a flowing one-in-a-bar; and the choir’s staccato at the beginning of ‘Denn wir haben hie’ sounded exaggerated.

Listening a second and a third time proved instructive. My reservations didn’t disappear but they were certainly lessened: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In ‘Denn alles Fleisch’, Alsop slows down so that the climax almost matches the end of ‘Praise to the holiest’ in Gerontius. In the next movement she builds up ‘Der Gerechten Seelen’, the fugal section over an extended pedal-point, to another mighty conclusion. If she overdoes the rallentando at the end of ‘Denn wir haben hie’, she is in good company.

The Leipzig Radio Choir sounds like a large body. There are no fluffed entries and no weaknesses. The tenors are particularly impressive, with no sense of strain on the high notes. Stephan Genz is properly suppliant, even fearful, in ‘Herr, lehre doch mich’; and Anna Lucia Richter shows great promise in her solo. Well worth your money – but make sure you play the disc at least twice.