Urgency is the keyword here, a quality underlined in part by the use of a virtuoso chamber orchestra and also by the close, warm acoustic. Jarvi presses hard and keeps Beethoven’s rhythmic subsidiary writing vividly within the frame: accents slam home without rupturing the textures and my only minor complaint about the balance concerns the first movement of the Eighth where the timpani tend to hog climaxes so that the full harmonic flavour of Beethoven’s chords is obscured. In the finale the battle-happy timps are even more fiercely assertive, but to thrilling effect, and in the finale’s development section Jarvi is careful to keep the important repeated notes on woodwinds clearly audible.

I like the Eroica’s bouncy, well sprung first movement and the perky woodwinds near the start of the development section (a very characterful bassoon), also the layer-upon-layer build-up at the start of the same movement’s coda. Barenreiter’s urtext is used and there are certain textual variations from the norm, for example the solo strings (rather than tutti) near the beginning of the Eroica’s finale (from 1'20") and the solo cello in the Trio of the Eighth. The Eroica’s Funeral March is more pensive than tragic but pretty powerful, and I’d say that if you’re after an athletically built, incisively played Eroica, one that’s light on its feet but that isn’t too obviously indebted to period-instrument conventions, Jarvi may well be your man. He’s certainly his own man and both performances gave me considerable pleasure.

As to rival versions, Mackerras (SCO, Hyperion, A/07) is marginally more relaxed, Dausgaard’s Swedish Chamber recordings (Simax, 9/06) display parallel virtues to Jarvi, and Skrowaczewski’s (Oehms) is a much-underrated cycle and closer to a more formal, “central” Beethoven style. But in the digital field Jarvi’s disc certainly holds its own, though the recordings are by no means new: the Eroica was taped two years ago and the Eighth three years ago. It would be interesting to know if this is yet another cycle in the making.