There are two ways of tackling The Dream of Gerontius. The less interesting one approaches the work on bended knee, lavishing piety and reverence upon it and reinforcing the reek of incense that so upset Anglicans at the first performance in 1901. The other is to treat it as the opera Elgar never wrote, as his Elektra or Palestrina, perhaps, and to underline its carefully plotted dramatic trajectory. Elgar never categorised his greatest choral work and, significantly, avoided describing it as an oratorio - its debts to German romanticism (especially to Parsifal) take it miles away from the Victorian choral tradition.

In any case, with Tom Randle as Gerontius in this performance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Sakari Oramo, theatricality was never likely to be underplayed. Randle is wonderfully instinctive and here, even though his close attention to the score suggested he may not have sung the part too often, every phrase was loaded with dramatic point. His voice has acquired extra heft in the past few years, and vocal weight is useful in this work that really demands an English heldentenor. When Randle settles into the role, he could be the definitive Gerontius of our time.

Everything about this performance was out of the ordinary. Jane Irwin's Angel was wonderfully poised and cool, exquisite in her description of St Francis and the stigmata, and rapturously reassuring in her farewell. James Rutherford had the fervour of an Old Testament prophet as the Priest and the Angel of the Agony.

All the portrayals were united by Oramo's conducting. That a Finn should respond so vividly to such a cornerstone of the English choral repertory says more about the work's German affiliations than anything else. The orchestral playing was by turns spacious and tightly intense, and the chorus was convincing both as demons and as the angelic host wafting the work to its close.