Most of the solo singing is of the sub-operatic variety prevalent in oratorio recordings from the ’60s and ’70s. The tenor and especially soprano are stretched painfully by their parts; the bass has years of Fasolts behind him, and sounds like it; Elisabeth Kulman does what she can to lend firm dignity to the Benedictus and angst to the first military interruption of the ‘Dona nobis’, but she and her colleagues are badly muffled in the mix. While the chorus behind them is even more recessed, the first violins are given strange and undue prominence in subsidiary lines at the opening of the Gloria and Credo while winds and timpani disappear into a bassy rumble.

Such a context makes it harder to evaluate Janowski’s contribution. Does the foursquare ‘Gratias’ plod because of an unduly slow meno allegro tempo, or the microphones relentlessly picking up the pizzicato thrum of the double bass? Rocky points such as the opening of the ‘Qui tollis’ are uncharacteristic of the conductor’s work: this is apparently the record of a single concert, and the reasons for its preservation are not obviously compelling.