One orchestra and nine conductors, and unlike the recent Bruckner cycle from Berlin (3/20), it’s remarkable how the Concertgebouw players mould their collective identity around the maestro in front. The singular novelty is Antal Dorati’s Ninth, grand and spacious (though with all repeats taken in the Scherzo) and surprisingly trenchant given the pace and vigour of his Mercury-era Beethoven (Nos 5 7) with the LSO. The Dutch radio microphones appear to be placed some way back in the Concertgebouw, which at least takes the edge off some rough solo singing.

The inclusion of this particular Ninth is a puzzle, however, when (for example) in 2019 Franz Welser-Möst led a Christmas Day performance much more in tune with the forward-facing narrative of the set as a whole. We’re left to work out the details of the story for ourselves. Daniel Esser and Lodewijk Collette are credited with responsibility for choosing the recordings but no rationale for their choice is offered, or a history of the orchestra’s Beethoven on record; instead the booklet prints symphony-by-symphony introductions of varying length and insight, a couple of which refer in passing to the relevant conductor.

Such slapdash presentation (in the same livery as the orchestra’s portmanteau Mahler cycle – 4/13) doesn’t do justice to some performances of exceptional interest, such as an Eighth led by Philippe Herreweghe some years before his Pentatone recording, yet considerably more infused with instrumental character, charm and a tension between Beethoven’s observance of 18th-century conventions as well as his subversion of them. When Jörg Widmann recently talked about the Eighth as ‘the first neoclassical symphony’ he could have had this very performance in mind.

Another highlight is a simply joyous Pastoral from Roger Norrington at his most genial and relaxed, readier than ever to admit ebb and flow (closing out with a glorious, horn-led sunset) and with his ideas realised at an altogether higher level of refinement than in his previous cycles from London and Stuttgart.

One distinguishing feature of the set as a whole is the orchestra’s talent for putting a human face on their playing – often as not a smile. In Leipzig and Munich respectively, Herbert Blomstedt and Mariss Jansons have given us recent Beethoven cycles of scrupulous refinement with old but calorie-counted orchestras. In Amsterdam, their interpretations of the Fourth and Fifth, while a touch slower, spring to life: Jansons finds unlikely kinship with Norrington and Harnoncourt (in charge of a bristling Eroica) in his individual pointing of the Fifth’s Andante con moto without a trace of militaristic swagger but instead breathing the same sweet air as the Pastoral. The First’s opening gambit is both funnier and better tuned than Zinman’s Zurich recording. Carrying less timber than Bernstein’s New York or Vienna recordings, the Scherzo and finale of this Second also take pleasure in their own athletic build and impish wit, though I find the distant sound and placid Larghetto harder to wear.

The Seventh with Carlos Kleiber is a special case. Familiar from its regular reissues on film, now on CD for the first time, it was picked out by his regular correspondent and biographer Charles Barber as a supreme example of the conductor’s art, and the minor-to-major transition of the Allegretto (from 2'46") is unrivalled even by Kleiber’s many other extant performances, led (as are many of the set’s most precious moments) by the Concertgbouw clarinets. I prefer the marginally greater precision and power in reserve of DG’s Vienna recording in the Scherzo and finale, but the choice is invidious. Readers streaming the set will find Kleiber’s Seventh withheld for licensing reasons and replaced by a Kubelík performance from 1962: no replacement at all, really. For the avid Beethoven collector, it’s the CDs or nothing.