The last time I heard Sir Colin Davis conduct the Verdi Requiem was in 1992 at a concert given in memory of the late Claudio Arrau. He is a fine Verdian who, like Toscanini at a similar age, has lost none of his fire and command. Not that this is in any sense a Toscanini-like performance. Like most latter-day interpreters, Sir Colin conducts the Requiem with a judicious mix of fire and meditative calm; tempi never drag nor are they, in the reflective passages, metronome-quick. The work of the LSO Chorus is first-rate, as is that of the LSO itself. As for the soloists, they are passable, though, as with many live accounts of the Requiem, the recording itself is a complicating factor.

Alan Blyth argued that were it not for the remote balance of the soloists (“a serious drawback in this piece”), Riccardo Muti’s live Milan performance would be an evident front-runner. In this live Barbican performance, the soloists are not exactly remote; equally, they are not quite “there”. That former doyen of Gramophone reviewers Trevor Harvey used to complain bitterly about records that caused him endlessly to rise from his chair to adjust the volume. His shade was certainly at my elbow as I tried, with little success, to find here a setting that gave the soloists presence without making the tightly focused Barbican recording sound strident in the climaxes.

My initial impression of all four soloists was of an excess of vibrato, and some insecurity, beyond the stave. Since this sometimes ceases to be the case during the more reflective sequences, I am left wondering how much of the performance came from the live concerts and how much from carefully framed out-of-hours make-up sessions.

Whatever the answer, the end product is inconsistent in terms of both quality and balance. For a genuine “live” experience go to Toscanini or Giulini’s generally fine 1963 Proms performance on BBC Legends. Better still are Giulini’s EMI studio recording, the John Eliot Gardiner on Philips, and the outstanding new Pappano set on EMI.