Though by most reckonings a full-blooded Romantic, Brahms looks forward to the 20th century - Schoenberg famously acknowledged him as a precursor. His musical style was also firmly rooted in tradition, however, and it is this aspect that John Eliot Gardiner is investigating in his fascinating series with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.

The first programme set the great German Requiem in context, looking back to Bach and beyond. It began with Brahms's own Begrabnisgesang, an early funeral piece for chorus, 12 wind/brass and timpani. Period instruments are always a revelation in Brahms and here the thrillingly sombre sonorities of natural horns, trombones and tubas gripped the imagination. It was intriguing, too, to hear the pre-echo of the composer's own For all Flesh from the Requiem.

Brahms was a fervent admirer of Schutz, and his annotated copy of the latter's Wie Lieblich sind deine Wohnungen suggests that it was in his mind when composing the corresponding movement in the Requiem. Musical parallels are not obvious but the Lutheran seriousness of purpose that irradiates the Schutz is a feature of the Requiem generally.

Gardiner has also been studying early sources, notably Fritz Steinbach's annotations to scores of the symphonies, endeavouring to shape his own historically informed approach for the 21st century.

The result was lucid and nuanced, but demonstrated less in the way of elasticity of tempo than had been promised. In that sense it cleaved closer to the "straightforward" tradition going back through Weingartner to Richter than to the more interventionist one traceable to Bulow, most prominently essayed by Abendroth and Furtwangler. If that was a disappointment, it was a relief to have For all Flesh dispatched by this virtuoso choir in an entirely convincing 12 minutes, four minutes less than Furtwangler's intolerably funereal 1947/8 readings.

Indeed, Gardiner's total timing of 66 minutes knocked 13 minutes off Furtwangler, bringing a mellifluous lyrical flow to How Lovely are thy Dwellings and thrusting momentum to the grander movements.

Vibrato-less strings lent a suitably bleak quality to the opening Blessed are they that Mourn; liquid flutes and reedy oboes brought vibrant colour throughout. The limpid purity of Katharine Fuge's soprano looked back to Baroque antecedents, while Dietrich Henschel's lieder expertise facilitated communicative intimacy. The final Blessed are the Dead at last exhibited a daring flexibility of tempo that perhaps bodes well for the series which continues tonight.

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