Even in this, the bicentenary of his death, performances of Haydn's oratorio Die Jahreszeiten are rare, so all credit to the Three Choirs festival and artistic director Geraint Bowen for daring to stage it.

This work says a lot about the aged Haydn, not least that he was clearly too nice to insist that the libretto be drastically cut. However, the music teems with wonderful naturalistic detail, and the Philharmonia – in residence at the festival – made it count, by no means easy in a cathedral acoustic. Crystal-clear German enunciation by the excellent soloists – Gillian Keith, James Gilchrist and Roderick Williams – joined up the astonishing word-painting, and the characters of Hanne, Lukas and Simon, often mere ciphers, were invested with real emotion.

The festival chorus acquitted itself admirably, but it was conductor Bowen's willingness to bring out the irrepressibly exuberant aspects of the score that made this account so vivid. The dramatic summer storm, the glorious hunting horns of autumn, and the peasants' hiccuping, rollicking merry-making are every bit as realistic as Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, usually seen as the beginnings of Romanticism. The suggestion here was that good old Haydn did it first.