Even the longest-serving Elgarians will only have heard a handful of performances of The Apostles, the huge (nearly two-and-a-half-hour) oratorio intended as the first element in a sacred trilogy of Wagnerian proportions. In fact, Elgar completed only two-thirds of the project. This first instalment, premiered in 1903, was followed three years later by The Kingdom, but after that his enthusiasm faded, and only a few themes for the third part, The Last Judgment, were sketched. Those were recycled much later in other works (also unfinished) such as the Third Symphony.

It's hard to imagine, though, that subsequent generations have been deprived of a blazing masterpiece by one of Britain's greatest composers. As this performance by Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra demonstrated all too clearly, The Apostles is by no means a convincing start to the triptych (The Kingdom is better and shorter, for a start). The musical inspiration, religious conviction and dramatic momentum that drive The Dream of Gerontius (completed in 1900) are scarce commodities in this score.

Too much of The Apostles resorts to faded Victorian piety, especially in the choral writing. Some of the solo numbers are better, though the characterisation in these scenes from the life of Christ and his disciples comes and goes; only Judas and Mary Magdalene emerge as fully three-dimensional figures. Unlike Gerontius there's no whiff of opera here, apart from a passing echo of Parsifal in the preludes to each half, for Elgar's approach is too reverent and subfusc by half.

Hickox did what he could to inject life into the proceedings, the LSO Chorus coped admirably with some taxing passages, and an excellent troupe of soloists, in which Alice Coote as Mary Magdalene was outstanding, worked hard, but this is never going to be a work that gets more than the occasional revival.