Third time lucky I’d say applies more than ever to Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s three recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth. The first, a forthright but relatively straightforward affair with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (a Gramophone Award-winner in 1992), found this maverick genius erring on the side of caution, whereas for the second, with his own band, Concentus Musicus Wien, he truly threw caution to the winds with some outsize gestures, especially the fragmented way he dealt with the Symphony’s close (more like Sibelius’s Fifth than Beethoven’s Fifth). That zany option is dropped for this ‘Farewell from Zurich’ (he also performed this work with the Berlin Philharmonic around the same time), the beauty of which is its total avoidance of a downbeat, valedictory descent: there’s no suggestion here of going ‘gentle into that good night’ (Dylan Thomas), not even raging ‘against the dying light’ … because the light isn’t dying: this is as life-affirming, fiery and beautifully shaped a Fifth as I’ve heard in decades, faster, lighter and more heroic than before.

Yes, there’s still a bend in the line as the Scherzo morphs into its quasi-fugal Trio and the repeated gestures soon afterwards are again teased with prominent Luftpausen (a ploy that is even more pronounced with Concentus), but such is the elevated spirit of this Zurich concert performance that what previously sounded like mannerisms now seem part and parcel of a unified vision, and boy does it deliver. Come the symphony’s close and the audience is stunned into silence until they suddenly realise where they are and what they’ve just heard, and then they let loose loud volleys of applause. As one writer put it, ‘an earthquake had struck, the tremors had gone through the bone’.

A short sequence of rehearsal fragments (translations are provided in the handsome booklet) teaches us, among other things, how Harnoncourt views and shapes the slow movement – a high point of the performance – and how he deals with the quietly tapping timpani line leading into the explosive finale. Repeats for the Scherzo and the finale are observed. In Mozart’s Gran Partita for winds and double bass the opening Molto allegro again witnesses some meaningful pauses but they hardly prove distracting. Here we have another winner. Of special distinction are the keen accents in the first Menuetto’s Trio, the fluid, warmly blended Adagio (fairly swift at 5'00"), the pacy second Menuetto, the adoringly embraced Romance fifth movement and the way the highly characterful theme and variations rushes attacca into the extrovert finale. Andrew Werner’s recordings of both works are wholly excellent. If anyone needs proof that Harnoncourt was one of the great conductors of the last 70 years or so, here it is.