Dream of Gerontius
Barbican Hall
****

He may have been removed from the £20 banknote but Edward Elgar is still our great national composer. To celebrate his 150th anniversary, the LSO chose his choral masterpiece The Dream of Gerontius, putting it in the capable hands of Richard Hickox.

If the mantle of Sargent, Barbirolli and Boult has fallen on anybody's shoulders, it is surely those of Hickox.

Other conductors have sometimes inclined towards brisker, highly energised readings - often with revealing results. Conducting from memory, Hickox demonstrated here - pursuing and indeed attaining the sublime - that he is firmly rooted in the Anglican tradition.

He makes bold use of tenuto, stretching out phrases to expressive effect, but the big choral acclamations (the London Symphony Chorus on fine form) were properly thrilling and the passages of the soul's inner communing have rarely seemed more rapt.

Philip Langridge, now an astonishing 67, is still a peerless Aschenbach, but well placed as he is to deliver a careercrowning Gerontius, it failed to materialise on this occasion.

The aftermath of flu rendered his phrasing short-breathed and whole lines were transposed down an octave. Nevertheless, his account was an eloquent, impassioned one, as were those of Anna Larsson (the Angel) and Peter Coleman-Wright, who took the bass solos.

But the night belonged to Hickox, to the incomparable Maurice Murphy, making his last appearance as the orchestra's principal trumpet, and of course to Elgar, our national treasure.