During the autumn of 2008, Vladimir Ashkenazy devised a three-week Elgar festival with the Sydney SO, culminating in two performances of The Dream of Gerontius in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. Captured with floorboard-shaking amplitude by the ABC microphones, it’s a considerable achievement. Not only is the feeling of a genuine event excitingly conveyed, Ashkenazy conducts with heaps of spirit, tingling drama and red-blooded commitment to the cause, and he draws an unstintingly fervent and laudably disciplined response from his massed cohorts.All that’s missing, I feel, is the last ounce of vision, control and canny instinct that mark out, for example, both mono Sargent versions (Sir Malcolm’s towering April 1945 recording for HMV was the first of the work in its entirety and remains the interpretative touchstone for yours truly), as well as those nourishing and much-loved stereo successors under Barbirolli (EMI), Britten (Decca) and Boult (EMI). While no match for the incomparable Heddle Nash on the 1945 Sargent, Mark Tucker sings with conspicuous ardour, but the voice acquires a distracting wobble and loses colour when under pressure. Both Lilli Paasikivi and David Wilson-Johnson, on the other hand, are excellent, though the former doesn’t quite efface memories of Gladys Ripley (again for Sargent, and whose delivery of ‘Softly and gently’ really does move the listener to tears every time). Still, there’s far more to extol than to moan about, and this certainly makes a worthwhile addition to the Gerontius discography.

The coupling is a marvellously sympathetic live performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto featuring the golden-toned Chinese virtuoso Jian Wang. Not only is he wholly attuned to the idiom, his gorgeously supple and consistently touching contribution has both innate good taste and notable depth of feeling to commend it. With Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony lending personable and attentive support, this has to be one of the most communicative accounts of Elgar’s masterpiece to have come my way in recent years and represents the icing on the cake of an undeniably attractive package.