This was the second half of the concert, following the Prelude and Liebestod and Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto, so it’s instantly clear that Rattle considers Haydn’s music to be just as heavyweight as that by those later masters. Nevertheless, he’s streamlined the orchestra to a string section of 8.8.6.5.3, which still provides enough heft for the Chaos-Earthquake opening while not obscuring the LSO’s wonderful winds.

Some of these children are truly wild. The overture to L’isola disabitata is pretty much as Sturmisch und Drangisch as Haydn ever got; the phrases don’t quite seem to join up in the slow movement of Tempora mutantur; the orchestra stops to retune in the finale of Il Distratto. The double bass gets a solo in Le matin while the whole orchetra shows off its virtuosity in the finale of No 46, a B major graveyard for under-rehearsed bands. The ‘Music for Musical Clocks’ sounds like something left on the cutting-room floor during the Sgt Pepper sessions and one has to forgive Rattle for milking three rounds of applause from the false endings of No 90’s finale.

Surely the title isn’t quite right: it should be ‘imaginative’ rather than ‘imaginary’, as this music is real, still able to surprise and delight, and this sequence is a true breath of fresh air, enabling even died-in-the-wool Haydnistas to hear something new in these often forgotten gems of genius.