This, the first ever recording of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, has always seemed to me one of the most convincing. Like the great Sawallisch set of the 1960s (Philips, 8/93), it is one of the few to employ a small professional chorus, much preferable to the overblown sound of a larger group. They sing with promptness and gusto under the keen baton of Stanford Robinson, a much underrated conductor. He never lingers, and thus gives the work the dramatic verve that it calls for. A nascent BBC Symphony Orchestra play with vigour and sensitivity as and when the score requires. The Wireless Singers, later to become the BBC Singers, are assigned those numbers the composer gave to a smaller group but are too often given to the main chorus.

The cast is headed by Harold Williams’s incomparable Elijah. He repeated the part under Sargent in the Columbia set of 1947 (Dutton, 9/96) with just as much authority as here. Nobody, in English versions at any rate, sings the part with such a rightful combination of despair, anger and inner sincerity – just what it calls for. In vocal terms he is secure and strong from top to bottom of his voice, and his enunciation of the text is second to none.

Isobel Baillie sings with her customary purity and feeling, and is in better voice than in 1947. Her “Hear ye, Israel” is one of the best on disc. Parry Jones, though he never possessed the most lovely of sounds, is an eloquent, secure Obadiah, esspecially fine in “Then shall the righteous shine”. Clara Serena’s fruity contralto is from another age but she sensibly never sentimentalises her two solos, as many of her coevals used to.

Drawbacks? There are few minor cuts; in a couple of numbers an organ takes the place of the orchestra; and the recording is obviously not of 21st-century standard, but in its caring transfer by Divine Art it sounds remarkably fresh. Now the reading is on CD I shall return to it often. Besides, it is selling at £8.50 for the two discs, making it well worthy of investigation.