Manfred Honeck’s Beethoven does not ‘speak for itself’, whatever that is supposed to mean. Indeed, this Pastoral delivers something to outrage partisans of every stripe. The swift pacing and rejection of string saturation implies period norms, except that the prevailing aesthetic is subjective, closer to Iván Fischer’s liberation-through-nature. Where the Hungarian conductor has the audacity to reassign the finale’s famous melody to solo violin, the remainder of the section stealing in only gradually, Honeck gives extra prominence (and in the first movement illicit extra notes) to the piccolo. He even encourages sedentary folk dancing from his players in the Trio of the third. Is this the way to jolt into attentiveness a desensitised modern audience routinely subjected to higher norms of dissonance and deprived of silence? Opinions will differ.

There are wonderful things alongside the dottiness, assisted by sound recording that is truly state-of-the-art, both spacious and super-detailed. The happy, breezy atmosphere of the opening Allegro ma non troppo recalls Carlos Kleiber’s one-off concert performance, for all that Honeck rejects that maestro’s stripping out of repeats. In this respect at least he is closer to his long-serving Pittsburgh predecessor William Steinberg, on a fondly remembered mono LP (Capitol, 5/53). Raspier horns and abrupt shifts of perspective show how far we have travelled. Better still is the ‘Scene by the Brook’ where, with Adrian Boult’s once novel urgency, we are transported from a Pennsylvanian steel town to the Austrian meadows of Honeck’s childhood. Textures are pristine with lean-toned violins antiphonally placed, conspicuously muted at the start. At the far end of this spellbinding movement the woodwind’s birdcalls really do sound like the real thing. So too the ‘peasants merrymaking’ – unless of course you find the hearty foot-stamping over the top. I loved the storm, its squally showers, thunder and lightning revivified with scrubbing strings, crisply detonated timps and squealing piccolo. Honeck, very much a believer, italicises the finale’s hymnlike benedictions, consciously simulating prayer and genuflection. The final two chords, the last contribution of the slow movement’s cuckoo, also constitute the farewell of a man for once ‘in pure and complete harmony with both nature and God’. Controversial to the end, then, but never boring and unfair to carp, surely, when a conductor goes to the trouble of explaining his decision-making in what must be uniquely detailed accompanying notes.

One of the orchestra’s own commissions serves as makeweight. Steven Stucky’s Silent Spring (2011) was composed to mark the 50th anniversary of the prescient environmental science book of the same name by Pittsburgh native Rachel Carson. The music too can be heard as a call to action to save nature and the Earth. As might be expected from the author of a critical biography entitled Lutosławski and his Music (CUP: 1981), Stucky writes passages where elegant improvisatory fluttering holds sway, although American music aficionados will more often be reminded of Christopher Rouse’s doleful ruminations. After 16 and a half minutes we are left alone in the silence. The coupling makes sense and certainly provides a contrast: Stucky, who died in 2016, sounds distinctly pessimistic about our prospects.

I should mention that these are billed as live recordings. While applause is excised, noises off include some growling from the podium. Strongly recommended, provided you are up for an interpretation with a capital I.