Industrial-size electric stoves were being juggled with lights to avoid overloading the wiring as Edward Higginbottom rehearsed the Woodstock-based European Union Baroque Orchestra in New College Ante-Chapel. “The length of that last note: it should go tum-ter,” he commented as the music moved forward, adding: “We did overdo 36. It’ll almost look after itself.” EUBO had pulled in members from ten different corners of Europe to join New College Choir in Oxford’s contribution to BBC Radio 3’s recent Mozart-fest — a live broadcast of the Requiem.

This was a performance of the Requiem as a liturgical composition, with the music split up between spoken parts of the mass, as Mozart intended. Sitting in the main chapel for the broadcast itself, with the daylight fading behind the stained glass windows and the many chapel candles flickering in deepening shadows, it was easy to feel that we were participating in Mozart’s own funeral mass.

The only obvious differences were that the musical part of the proceedings remained the other side of the organ screen, out in the ante-chapel, while we, the congregation, were exhorted to speak up during the responses so radio listeners could hear us.

Musically the Requiem gains greatly from being split up. The Kyrie, for instance, hits you with renewed force when separated from Requiem aeternam by the spoken introduction: “God has shone in our hearts”. Dies irae wallops you even more between the ears when it follows Epistle and Gospel readings, especially when delivered with the punch it received here — for me, this will be a long-remembered moment.

While, of course, it wasn’t possible to hear every detail, the sound of soloists Jonty Ward, brothers Hugh and Guy Cutting, and Jonathan Howard, choir, and orchestra all travelled well through the organ screen, thanks to Higginbottom’s trademark focus on clear delivery of words and dynamics, backed by an evident, but never overstated, rhythmic drive.