Leonard Bernstein yearned to be taken seriously as a composer. His early works suggest he would have been, but he was side-tracked by his conducting career. His ego also got in the way: his mid-period compositions have awkward 12-tone rows crammed into them, and some are built around self-aggrandising concepts that at worst are truly cringeworthy. The glaring example of this is Symphony No 3, Kaddish. Written in 1963, it sets the Kaddish prayer for the dead for soprano and choir but contains a controversial narration in the form of a dialogue over faith between man (Bernstein) and God, with lines like “You know who I am!… We can still be immortal” that presuppose equal status. Pappano scores points by casting Dame Josephine Barstow as the speaker: she is a fine actress, a woman, and clearly old, all of which turn the diatribe into a character...