Since first watching the Beethoven Ninth led by Kirill Petrenko in his much-trailed inaugural concert in charge of the Berlin Philharmonic (A/19) I have gone back periodically in search of answers. Given the uncanny tension of his Bayreuth Ring, his work at the Bavarian State Opera (such as the Lulu, 11/17) and previous BPO concerts available at the Digital Concert Hall, why did it fall short? Was the hype itself at fault or my own weakness for it? Antonini and Mackerras (with the OAE on Signum), among a very select group on records, reached an accommodation between Beethoven’s metronome marks, the density of the Ninth’s material and the scale of its orchestration. Petrenko’s outward-facing, almost balletic account of the Adagio as well as the nervous, compact struggles of the first movement felt curiously lightweight by comparison, to say nothing of the finale’s brusque carnival of idioms.

Now, addressing the performance purely as a record and not as the film of an occasion, however auspicious, I find the responsibility for accommodation falling with me; with an acceptance of the Ninth as a long-prepared public statement and not a confessional string quartet writ large; with a form that, no less than Fidelio, resists being unified or brought under a single banner. Playing out the finale as a French revolutionary cantata, obstreperous and vernacular, will disappoint listeners who seek a transcendent release from the accumulated pathos of the previous movements. Yet it is what Beethoven wrote and, for as long as the performance lasts, so it must be. Paradoxically such a realisation also relieves the symphony of its burdensome manifesto and history.

There is, I think, much less to argue over the other performances, which predate Petrenko’s formal accession to the post. The fierce and balletic qualities of his Beethoven find a more natural home in the Seventh, in the Totentanz of the Allegretto as well as the dance-suite of the Scherzo and Trio, where the country folk of the Sixth have swapped their clogs for pumps without quite brushing all the mud off their gaiters.

The finale’s dynamic tension – since Carlos Kleiber, has there been anything to touch it? – is a hallmark of Petrenko’s work, but it pays off most handsomely here in the bold designs of late symphonic Tchaikovsky, and specifically the first movement of the Fifth. Interviewing the conductor before the Ninth, the orchestra’s principal cellist Ludwig Quandt salutes him for the ‘unbelievable concentration and intensity of rehearsals – you’re never content, but also never discontented’.

Accordingly, the first movement’s introduction must be among the most tense yet restrained on record – compared to Mravinsky’s chilly formality, warmed up with tiny flickers of timing and phrasing in the string accompaniment to the clarinet solo. There is not a trace of sickly nostalgia to the ardent spring of the Allegro’s second theme or portentous inevitability to the finale’s coda, so that, like the Pathétique (assessed in detail on its original release, 7/19), this is a symphonic contest fought in real time rather than recalled from some blasted future.

While Petrenko’s disinclination to speak to the press has generated a certain mystique and inevitable scepticism, he always proves a winningly candid interviewee at the orchestra’s digital home. In a written introduction to the set, he traces his enthusiasm for Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony back to student days in Vienna: similar in that regard to Zubin Mehta, if in few others, for high-calorie legato is not Petrenko’s way. Even more than on Paavo Järvi’s recent recording (DG, A/20), Schmidt sounds much more the contemporary of Elgar and Magnard than the would-be successor to Bruckner, even if his orchestration is also organised in block-like registers. In this regard the Berlin Phil engineers have pursued an interventionist approach that complements the conductor’s concern for refinement over richness but also pulls the texture out of shape with spotlit solos (not only Quandt in the stifled pathos of the slow movement’s big tune). Even so, as with his Tchaikovsky, it’s the vividly communicated vision of structure that makes Petrenko’s account required listening.

That leaves the short-lived Rudi Stephan – another neglected contemporary of Strauss in Petrenko’s sights – and his Music for Orchestra from 1912. For all its surface abstraction, the 15-minute piece shares a melodic swagger with Don Juan and a macabre brilliance with La valse, and belongs no less than Schmidt to the end of the long 19th century, with the most French, piercing colours of its orchestration highlighted by Petrenko (and rather more vividly executed than the rival Chandos account from Melbourne, 1/06). The 2012 concert – only Petrenko’s third appearance with the orchestra – also included the Music for Violin and Orchestra; one regrets its exclusion, like that of the Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung which originally accompanied Beethoven’s Seventh, but there are enough inspired performances here to satisfy the most demanding listeners.