It goes without saying that this new LPO live disc enters a crowded field. What, then, justifies its release? For a start, both performances show Haitink on fiery, unbuttoned form – the caution of the conductor’s 2008 CSO Resound Heldenleben (10/10) is nowhere to be heard. The Don Juan, meanwhile, gives any account in the catalogue a run for its money in terms of sheer élan, and bristles with energy. The LPO’s playing is vibrant and full of the sense of a live performance, and the engineering – taped at the Royal Festival Hall in 1992 – is pretty decent.

The change in sound quality between this and the later work is significant and the booklet reveals why: the Heldenleben dates from six years earlier and was recorded at the BBC Proms. It’s all a bit rougher and readier, with the horns, in particular, tending to dominate the texture and the percussion coming across as boomy and clattery. However, it’s a performance that still allows for some subtlety, with nicely characterised violin solos from David Nolan (although he’s no match, in terms of refined virtuosity, for the CSO’s Robert Chen) and careful handling of the critics, whose reappearance before the battle is especially chilling. The battle itself comes across as a titanic struggle, with Haitink driving the martial rhythms hard; indeed, throughout the whole piece there is a bracing sense of the heroic, of cadences fought for and bravely achieved. Despite this, though, the conductor’s command of the work’s vast structure never seems in doubt.