They are, of course, under half that length, but Stravinsky’s masterly concentration of structural means made it possible to suggest, as he would have put it, 12 minutes of felt time in five minutes of ontological, or real, time.
All of this was superbly suggested by Andrew Davis and the BBC players, although they only truly nailed the music’s taxing details in a repeat performance, given, Davis told his audience, in order to prove the composer’s point that the three exquisitely textured 12-part Variations make a different expressive effect each time we hear them. As for the symphony, exuberantly presented by Davis, there is little to mark except the extraordinary affinities both thematically and texturally with Glazunov’s Fifth and Eighth Symphonies. In truth, despite its charm, there is hardly an original moment in this work, which is the more odd considering that The Right of Spring was only three years away.The programme also included a sparkling performance of the Violin Concerto, with Kyoko Takezawa a bright but never brittle soloist, and Davis tautly in command. In fact, Davis seems particularly in tune with those neo-classical works that Boulez, for instance, another contributor to this concert series, has always dismissed.

This was borne out by Davis’s marvellous reading of Persephone the previous week. It was an interpretation that positively glowed, the chording in Stravinsky’s exquisitely weighted textures breathtakingly poised. Wonderful singing by the BBC Symphony Chorus and New London Children’s Choir, a beautifully judged commentary by Irene Jacob, and Donald Kaasch’s accomplished tenor completed the picture. It was followed by a powerfully- intense Oedipus Rex, whose vastly different classical world was no less magisterially captured.

Jon Garrison, Louise Winter and Alan Opie were outstanding soloists and Samuel West narrated with flair.Which leaves the Matrix Ensemble’s Sunday evening concert. It was notable for a lively rendering of that inimitable burlesque, Renard, beautiful singing by Susan Roberts and Mark Tucker in the Cantata, and a rare performance of the Four Russian Peasant Songs for ladies voices and four horns, exhilarating in its rustic verve.The BBC Singers/ Matrix concert will be broadcast tomorrow, 9.45pm, on `Choir Works’, Radio 3. A three-hour oratorio about the history of slavery where the audience comes out whistling the tunes has to count as some kind of a triumph. Blood on the Fields by Wynton Marsalis – who wrote both the music and the libretto, and who performs the work at the Barbican on Tuesday with his Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra and the three featured vocalists of John Hendricks, Miles Griffith and Cassandra Wilson – is an extraordinary achievement by any standards. While the London concert is sold out, everyone will have a chance to hear it soon when the Sony CD of the piece is released.Though previously Marsalis’s music has, despite his abundant gifts as a trumpet soloist, tended to err on the side of a rather dry classicism, Blood on the Fields is compellingly emotional.