The singers and instrumentalists of Lübeck Opera presented a concert version of Monteverdi’s Vespers that was likely some way distant in sonority and approach from 21st-century ideas of 17th-century aesthetic style. Christoph von Dohnányi has, in any case, always expressed scepticism about the doctrine and realisation of an ‘authentic’ performing style as derived from historically informed scholarship, such as was starting to filter out in the 1950s from scholarly organisations such as the Schola Cantorum of Basel and into wider consciousness. However, in this performance he used the then-new edition of the score by Walter Goehr, which required antique instruments such as recorders and a viola da gamba to be dispersed among the traditional forces of a symphony orchestra.