EXACTLY a year since the remaining members of Pink Floyd — David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason — reunited with Roger Waters to perform at Live8, the battle for custody of the group’s legacy rumbles on. Gilmour, who billed himself “The voice and guitar of Pink Floyd”, included a generous complement of Floyd songs in his recent shows at the Albert Hall.

But Waters, now billing himself “The creative genius of Pink Floyd”, upped the ante at Hyde Park, where he performed the group’s masterwork, Dark Side of the Moon, in its entirety.

This strangely timeless album remains a touchstone of the classic rock era, and Waters took great pains not to interfere in any way with the sound or structure of the songs as they were recorded. The noise of screeching trains and clanging clocks ricocheted around a vast speaker system, which fired sounds at the audience not only from the sides of the stage but also from the back corners of the enclosure. The guitarist Dave Kilminster produced an elegant facsimile of Gilmour’s soaring guitar solo (and his vocal part) in Money, while Mason was actually there in person behind the kit, his lugubrious features giving nothing away as he rattled out the stuttering introduction to Time.

It was a technically flawless performance, and Waters has as good a claim to this material as anyone else in or out of Pink Floyd. But, after the real thing on this very stage only a year ago, there was something inescapably ersatz about this note-perfect re-creation — a bit like seeing Axl Rose and a bunch of session men playing all the old Guns N’ Roses songs.

That said, the 62-year-old Waters was on splendid form. His craggy features loomed menacingly from the screens at the side of the stage, and his voice took on a megalomaniac fervour, as he bellowed racial abuse at imaginary figures of hate during In the Flesh, one of many other Floyd songs that the band performed during the first half of the show.

There was an emotional version of Shine on You Crazy Diamond, during which pictures of Syd Barrett, the group’s long-departed singer, appeared on the screens, and a sensational take on Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, which took on a surreal quality as its hypnotic riff emanated from a stage that was bathed in the brilliant rays of the early evening sun.

There was also a new song in among all the nostalgia: Leaving Beirut, a remedial lesson in Middle Eastern politics that rather underlined why Waters may be best advised to stick to the tried and tested at this point in his career.