There is a super photograph on the back of Testament’s booklet showing Boult rehearsing the Gothic in the Royal Albert Hall using a megaphone, as if the most natural thing in the world, to communicate with the farthest-flung members of the vast forces under his baton. Mind you, he was used to logistical issues with this work; in his memoirs, Boult on Music, he recalled conducting one of the earlier massed rehearsals at Maida Vale while standing in the corridor of Studio 1!

The performance – the first of only three complete professional renditions the work has received (there have been two amateur ones) – Boult elicited from the hundreds of players and singers remains a superb achievement, even if only two of the four additional brass ensembles required were used on the night. A model of balance, his account has many differences of nuance with Ondrej Lenárd’s Bratislavan account mounted some 20 years ago (its most recent outing). Boult takes a measured view (just listen to the memorable stamping orchestral gesture at the outset), keeping the end – some 104 minutes away – in focus. Boult achieves greater grandeur in the magnificent Lento espressivo e solenne second movement while both interpretations are equally fantastical in the Vivace third. Throughout, Boult’s tempi are generally within the range of Lenárd’s, rarely faster, rarely much slower; overall Boult is quicker.

In the end, though there are pluses and minuses to both accounts, both men get to the heart of the matter. Lenárd is often more emphatic than Boult, for instance in the final statement of “saeculorum, saeculi” just before the reprise of the jaunty clarinet march in the sixth movement. There Boult was quiet and dignified rather than exultant yet is noticeably swifter in the lovely unaccompanied “In te Domine” just before all hell breaks loose for the concluding “Non confundar in aeternam”. Lenárd recorded the work’s two parts six months apart and his account of Part 1 is more vivid and self-contained; throughout he has the benefit of digital sound. Boult’s is the better sung, the British choirs more used to Latin, perhaps, than their Czech and Slovak rivals. For lovers of this work (and I am one) both versions are self-recommending; if pressed I think Boult’s newly restored recording scales the heights just that bit more.