Right from the generously spread opening chord, this is a Seventh with its roots in the 18th century, evoking a ceremonial character as well as an expectant mood in the Sostenuto introduction, which swings open like a pair of well-oiled ballroom doors. The Scotch-snap element to the main Allegro is also unusually prominent, though not exaggerated. If you wanted to choreograph a ballet to the Seventh (as Maurice Béjart did with the Ninth), you would find your soundtrack here.

What story would it tell? A meeting of town and country, perhaps, as a sequel to the Sixth. The gentle gravity of the Allegretto is underlined by its phrasing as a round dance, a German-Hellenistic counterpart to a Russian khorovod or Romanian hora. Gottfried von der Goltz leads from the front desk, but the well-aired studio engineering captures no shortage of strong personalities within the band. They lean down into the end of each repetition without the need for podium intervention or coordination. Still less bound to the metronome, Beethoven’s or anyone else’s, is the Ländler-like Trio to the Scherzo (at a pulse of around 66, like Kleiber, rather than the score’s 84).

If it’s corybantic fury you’re after, look elsewhere – try Petrenko in Berlin, 1/21 – but there are ways to build exhilaration through the finale without racing past the Allegro con brio sign. Even so, the absence of a guiding hand finally tells in the ostinato rhythm held with too tight a grip, more individually inflected in detail than Christopher Hogwood’s similarly paced and balanced recording (L’Oiseau-Lyre, 2/90) but missing his injection of adrenaline at decisive moments such as the entrance to the recapitulation. Without having to throw in our lot with either Weber or Wagner, we should reach the end of the Seventh convinced that it is the apotheosis of something, and the otherwise admirable Freiburgers don’t quite take me there.

They return to top form in the complete Prometheus ballet: an original but ideal coupling. Where was the weight of the Overture’s opening chords in their Ninth under Heras-Casado (9/20)? Where was the space and calm in which solo flute, harp and cello (No 5 in the ballet) range over Beethoven’s orchestral landscape at its most serene until the Pastoral’s ‘Scene by the Brook’? Last year’s anniversary seems to have revived interest in Beethoven’s music for the stage beyond his sole, troublesome opera, and here is a recording to convince anyone that he lacked opportunity rather than affinity to write for the ballet; one of these days, an adventurous company may even take him seriously in this regard rather than putting another symphony on stage.