It’s always problematical when a new recording has to confront rivalry from an almost impossibly great benchmark – the de Sabata Tosca, for example, or Britten’s own version of his War Requiem, Heifetz’s Korngold Concerto and, in this particular context, Václav Talich’s 1952 Czech Philharmonic recording of Josef Suk’s requiem “Symphony for Large Orchestra”, an epic work named after Asrael, the Angel of Death according to Islam, Sikhism and some Hebrew lore. Suk’s tragic prompt was twofold, initially the death of his father-in-law Dvorák and then, shortly afterwards, of his wife Otilka, at the age of 27. The symphony deals with “the struggle of life and death”, “loss”, Otilka herself and the futility of life, before hard-won acceptance marks a tentative but definite return to some semblance of normality. A bracing centrally placed scherzo has at its heart some of the most achingly beautiful music in the whole of Suk’s output.

Talich’s performance literally burns (there’s no other word for it) but the passing of time has taken its toll, sound-wise, and there are some aspects of the score – the eruptive, repeated bass-drum strokes from around 12'35" on this new recording – that by today’s digital standards lack clarity and impact. Sir Charles Mackerras actually learnt Asrael from Talich and this performance, recorded on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday 2007, betrays an almost symbiotic identification with the music – and for good reason. Sir Charles lost his daughter Fiona to cancer during the same year: in fact, he conducted the finale of a Beethoven cycle merely hours after her death, so there’s no questioning either the depth of his response (especially to the fourth-movement Adagio) or his understanding of the work’s two-tier structure.

The Czech Phil play wonderfully well for him, much as they did for Jirí Belohlávek and Václav Neumann, the former enjoying a warm, ambient recording, the latter sounding marginally brighter in tone, though neither quite matches Mackerras for overall intensity. I should also mention Rafael Kubelík, whose Munich performance is rather special (probably the greatest after Talich), and Libor Pesek with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, another credible contender. But this more recent Mackerras performance digs just that little bit deeper and for that reason edges nearest to the classics by Talich and Kubelík.