"From the heart: may it go to the heart," was Beethoven's inscription on the manuscript of his Missa Solemnis. A vast meditation on the awesome majesty of God and the unholy mess that mankind has made of his creation, it can be an overwhelming experience, though it remains one of the most notoriously difficult works to perform. Maintaining homogeneity of mood and continuity of momentum while responding to its vast emotional spectrum is beyond all but the greatest of conductors. The exacting vocal writing, reflecting Beethoven's determination to wring every shred of meaning from the text, makes it a nightmare for chorus and soloists alike.

The conductor of this performance was Philippe Herreweghe. He has very much made the work his own of late, partly because, one suspects, he has found the means to surmount nearly all of its technical challenges. The playing from his Orchestre des Champs Elysées was beautifully, exactingly shaped. The astonishing Collegium Vocale made the choral writing sound effortlessly thrilling, while losing none of the requisite sense of incipient danger. The solo quartet was hampered by the insipid soprano Claudia Barainsky, though tenor Benjamin Hulett and bass Michael Volle were exceptionally eloquent.

Some might have doubts about Herreweghe's interpretation, however. In the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo, he took us on a visionary journey in which elation and despair were held in check by a breathtaking sense of rapt contemplation. The lilting tempo he adopted for the Benedictus suggested playful joy, however, rather than intense wonder, while the Agnus Dei seemed curiously low-key. It is here that Beethoven evokes war as the image of mankind's ultimate refutation of the idea of God. Herreweghe underplayed the military music, suggesting a distant threat rather than potentially nihilistic violence. Most of his performance did indeed "go to the heart", but the closing pages weren't nearly as disturbing as they might have been.