Beethoven’s wonderful Missa is one of my favourite pieces of all time. I first heard it in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford (across the road from our house in Trinity College). It was a very hot, humid, summer day, and all the windows of the venerable building had been opened. In the middle of the Credo a huge crash of thunder and lightning suddenly exploded over our heads and no music was audible for quite a while. I suppose the choir staggered on as we recovered. I was certainly very wet crossing the road home.

I heard Sargent conduct it in the opening week of the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1951, but I got to know the piece better singing in the choir at Music Camp Reunions, and can still remember some of the difficult tenor sections which I practised assiduously at home.  Even with this motley crew of amateurs I felt the deep power of the work, its seriousness and its epic joy. Then I sang it a couple of times under Klemperer in the Philharmonia Chorus.

What is so special about the piece? Beethoven searched for a score of Bach’s B Minor Mass and wanted to include the “old modes”. So it has an ancient feel. But it is also high vintage late Beethoven, and incredibly adventurous.Stunning contributions from soloists and very demanding for the chorus (the highest and fastest music in the repertoire). It all sounds so amazing with pure tone, especially the stunning interlude before the adorable Benedictus, with its brilliant violin solo. And extremely atmospheric is the ending with its warlike interruptions. The whole work lives at an astonishingly high level of compositional nobility, passion, and humanity.

I was lucky enough to conduct the Missa at least eight times.

Wakefield Cathedral was the first, in some northern festival in the 1980s. The 1990s were rich in performances: the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony in Bonn and the Albert Hall, the San Francisco Symphony, and then the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Festival Hall.

I remember the Bonn performance well, because it was the first time I conducted the Missa from memory. As Kay was leaving the dressing room before the show, she called out “Don’t forget your score”. I replied “I don’t need it today; it’s easier from memory”. She yelled back “It’s not easier for ME!” Perhaps she didn’t enjoy the afternoon as much as I did…

I remember the San Francisco time because it was embedded in an “Experience” weekend. Our great friend Michael Steinberg was commenting and lecturing, and wondering why people were so frightened by the idea of “Solemnis”; after all it’s just the regular name of every Catholic Mass. He said “If it was called the Missa La Bamba people would flock in!” I was similarly explaining that if you play the whole piece at Beethoven’s likely speeds it is all much more natural and enjoyable. It doesn’t need to be made grander than it is already.

In the new century I played it again with the Philharmonia, and recorded a performance with my Stuttgart Radio Orchestra. The final time I tended the flame was in the New York’s Carnegie Hall with my great friends the Orchestra of St Lukes. It was a glorious evening, and a fitting end to my Missa career.