This DVD of the recently issued Britten/Pears mini series recorded by the BBC for television way back in the 1960's and the 70's is for all intents and purposes another resounding success. All four priceless documents were thought lost, but this Idomeneo seems to have had a charmed life more than others. Indeed, three days before the Aldeburgh première, the hall was left in cinders and it is something of a miracle that the television production could actually go ahead.

Previous recordings allotted the words of the angel in the Evangelist's narration of No. 13 to the tenor, but Münchinger rightly, in my view, gives them to the Angel. His direction is more lively and, where called for, more dramatic than in the competing version under Richter, and the Decca recording has, also, an extra brightness and clarity lacking in the DGG. The soloists are admirable in both versions, and in both, also, the Pastoral Symphony is beautifully played.

This performance is a revelation. Philip Reed, in his authoritative note, points out that, unbeknown to many, Britten and Giulini had a mutual respect for and an admiration of each other’s work. Here they combine to give a performance that is a true Legend, as this BBC series has it. Giulini’s reading is as dramatic and viscerally exciting as any I have heard. The music leaps from the page new-minted in his thoroughgoing, histrionically taut hands, the rhythmic tension at times quite astonishing. For instance, the sixth movement, ‘Libera me’, is simply earth-shattering in its effect, every bar, every word, every instrument sung and played to the hilt – and so it is throughout, with the live occasion added to the peculiar, and in this case peculiarly right, acoustics of the Albert Hall adding its own measure of verite to the inspired occasion.

In its scale and gravitas, Otto Klemperer’s interpretation of the St Matthew Passion draws on the Bach performance style that developed in the 19th century; but its clarity, its underlying energy, and its superb array of soloists – singers with impeccable operatic credentials – also ensure that full justice is done to the drama of Bach’s sublime retelling of the Gospel story.