The Ninth at New Year is a Leipzig tradition instituted in 1918 by its music director, Artur Nikisch. The event may not lend itself to commercial exploitation as readily as the Silvesterkonzerte in Vienna and Berlin but the powerful message of thanksgiving, with which Nikisch wished to mark the end of hostilities, continues to resonate with the concert-goers of a city that has often had little to rejoice about during the intervening century.

This is not a Ninth riven with titanic conflict in the manner of Nikisch’s successor as Gewandhauskapellmeister, Wilhelm Furtwängler, but neither is it the kind of middle-of-the-road outline of the symphony to be sat through on an ArtHaus DVD and conducted by the longest-serving holder of the post, Kurt Masur. What may initially strike you as a mode of understatement in the opening two movements, crisply directed, lucidly structured and superbly played as they are, begins to take shape in the slow movement as a long-term vision for the piece: a symphonic celebration for which the finale serves as a necessary culmination rather than a challenge or retort to foregoing conflict. The Gewandhaus players keenly respond to that vision. In his undemonstrative way, Blomstedt has their eyes.

With a small change to the textual underlay and a cadential embellishment, Gerhaher brings a tone of regretful admonishment to his opening solo, like a latter-day Moses returning from Mount Sinai with tablets of stone. As though inspired by their new prophet, the choral basses cry ‘Freude’ with conviction and a smile. Among the other soloists, Mihoko Fujimura also stands out. I like the way she makes something distinctive of her final leap to the surprising D natural on the cadence of the final quartet. Blomstedt holds a long pause before the inevitable ovation and in that moment, and indeed illuminating his leadership of the whole symphony as the film direction often lets us see, there is something very like radiance.