Do we need another recording of Carmina Burana, even a sonic spectacular like this? There are 40 available versions currently, including classic studio accounts from Frühbeck de Burgos (my favourite), Jochum and Previn (his 1974 recording). All too many more recent high-profile issues, such as those by Thielemann and Rattle, have lacked staying-power.

Rattle’s makes the most obvious direct competitor for this newcomer, being also a live concert account. The Chandos engineers have worked wonders balancing the whole in the Barbican’s tricky acoustic, providing vivid sound allowing a wealth of orchestral detail to be heard, though the percussion’s prominence may not be to everyone’s taste. The dynamic range is enormous, so not a disc for in-car listening without constant recourse to the volume control.

Although this barnstorming performance plays squarely to the gallery, there are subtle touches, too, as in the “Round dance” (tr 9), for once truly poco esitante if not quite andante. Hickox’s emphasis of the “oompah” episode in the middle of “In taberna quando sumus” is overdone, however. The soloists make a fine trio, but Laura Claycomb sounds strained in the stratospheric heights of “Dulcissime” (tr 23); no one has matched Lucia Popp for Frühbeck de Burgos. Deliciously plaintive as is Barry Banks’s roasted swan, the honours go to Christopher Maltman for his unctuous yet bombastic Abbas Cucaiensis (tr 14) and ardent lover in the “Cours d’Amour” section. The choral contribution is excellent throughout, a slight shrillness at the start of “Ave formosissima” (tr 24) being a rare blemish.