How refreshing that Andris Nelsons comes to the Beethoven symphonies with no discernible interpretative axe to grind. He seems unconcerned with staying on top of the latest trends in historical performance practice, and appears similarly uninterested in reclaiming the mantle of pre war Central European maestros (à la Thielemann). Yet neither does he steer down the middle of the road. Unpredictable might be a succinct description of Nelsons’s interpretative approach. And because he doesn’t play it safe, there are more surprises here than one could reasonably expect from yet another traversal of the Nine.

I was frankly taken aback by the opening chords of the First Symphony, in which Nelsons somehow manages to convey a feeling of eyebrow-raised delight. It’s not easy for our jaded ears to appreciate Beethoven’s subtle harmonic jape (starting a Symphony in C with immediate detours to F and then G) but it’s played so characterfully here that it has its intended pull-the-rug-out effect. And because the subsequent Allegro is full of the requisite brio yet doesn’t feel at all pushed, and the Andante cantabile con moto is relaxed and songful, I was not expecting the Menuetto to be an utterly madcap scramble – faster, even, than the composer’s metronome mark. The finale of the Second Symphony also goes at quite a clip, and has the effervescence and zip of an opera buffa overture, yet is phrased with such care that its variegated terrain is still revealed with startling clarity (try from 1'54").

In addition to his ability to create audible drama from the harmonic surprises and tensions in Beethoven’s music, Nelsons also seems to have an innate sense of its ebb and flow. These help make his reading of the Eroica quite an eventful one, full of stark contrasts and an overall sense of exuberant spontaneity. It’s also marvellously detailed. Listen, say, at 10'10" in the first movement, where Nelsons really allows the lyrical woodwind theme to breathe and expand, and also to how much care he takes with the sforzando accents when the strings take up the melody. The string-playing is glorious throughout, in fact – richly sung and anguished in the Marcia funebre, then graciously delicate in the Scherzo, evoking an unexpected air of sylvan wonder. Nelsons takes more daring chances, too, transforming the Poco andante of the finale to a full-on Adagio, for instance, although it’s rendered so tenderly – and provides an expressive foil to the vigour of what surrounds it – that it works.

The contrasts are equally sharp in the Fourth, whose outer movements are quite boisterous – the finale is particularly mirthful – while the Adagio is sublime, sometimes breathtaking (try at 2'24"), and so full of incident that it seems almost a world unto itself. Nelsons’s supple direction pays huge dividends here. In the Fifth, I have a few misgivings, however. Its opening movement is so astonishingly concise and rhythmically propulsive that it should come at one like a juggernaut – not that it needs to be sped along, mind you. It’s more about a steady hand, as Jansons demonstrates in his plain-spoken, immensely powerful recording with the BRSO. Nelsons is slightly too pliant and, as a result, the movement feels unfocused. I’d also prefer greater toughness in the finale. There are hints of it – the knuckling down at 4'57", for example – but the grandeur doesn’t always feel so hard-won.

Rattle attempted to inject some grit into the VPO’s sound in his first recorded cycle but the orchestra’s tonal splendour and refinement is difficult to counteract. Nelsons manages to elicit a hint of rusticity here and there in the Pastoral, although even the picture of hearty merrymaking in the third movement is closer to Jules Breton’s view of peasant life than Bruegel’s. Still, it’s a superb performance, with a lovely play of light and shade in ‘Scene by the Brook’, a ‘Storm’ that’s at its most ferocious in its quietest moments, and a truly heartfelt, paean-like finale. I’m a bit perplexed as to why Nelsons ignores the first-movement exposition repeat – I, for one, would be delighted to hear such a felicitously phrased reading a second time – as he consistently respects all of the repeats in the first five symphonies. Nor can I fathom why he observes the exposition repeat in the first movement of Eighth but not in the Seventh.

Ironically, Nelsons’s Eighth may be the least successful of the set. I like the precise sputtering of the strings in the finale but the Allegretto scherzando is stodgy; and while there’s plenty of brio in the opening Allegro vivace e con brio, it’s rather muscle-bound and lacks sparkle. The Seventh, on the other hand, has vivacity to spare. Nelsons almost hits the metronome mark in the third-movement Presto, and the VPO take the turbocharged tempo in their stride, seeming to revel in its giddiness. The finale is also fast-paced – not as fleet or as clear as Karajan in his last Berlin cycle – but thrilling in its own right.

The Ninth is splendid, for the most part. Nelsons is patient and exploratory in the first and third movements, making the most of the music’s extraordinary variety of weight, texture and emotional temperature (try at 13'48" in the first and at 12'45" in the third), and the natural gait he finds for the Molto vivace gives it a sense of galloping inevitability. The finale begins promisingly. I very much like how the first appearance of the great D major theme sounds like it’s hummed by the cellos and double basses (Nelsons turning Beethoven’s piano marking into a pianississimo). But the vocal quartet has a woolly start and the tenor’s choppy, rushed phrasing nearly spoils the alla marcia. Nelsons pulls it together after that, however, and the remaining sections gather considerable strength.

I can’t think of another cycle quite as volatile as this – not even Bernstein’s. There’s nothing in the least tentative or routine here. And even when Nelsons’s interpretative gambles don’t pay off, there’s never any doubt that he’s all in. The VPO follow him with ferocious dedication every step of the way.