It is the fate of the Ninth to bear more than its fair share of sombre contexts and lofty but impossible ideals: here, the exact centenary of the signing of the Armistice, ‘when the guns fell silent’. Heartfelt speeches from the stage have been judiciously cut for the inevitable commemorative release on film.

Appeals for peace and unity in Europe may ring hollow soon enough but the performance itself bears repetition, unfailingly lucid and rhythmically sprung in the Toscanini mould. As he had done at the BBC Proms during the previous summer, Donald Runnicles observed the first but not the second half of the Scherzo’s repeats in an intelligently paced reading of old-school tonal warmth, one that gathers a sense of purpose through its course.

The multinational nature of the ensemble and doubtless attenuated rehearsal time account for a few minor slips and the lack of grip to the middle movements – inviting choreographic treatment as a sequel to The Creatures of Prometheus – but the payoff for their accumulating momentum arrives with a finale of admirable coherence. Sensitively phrased off with feminine endings, the cello recitative feels neither old- nor new-school but just right. The joy theme is ushered in without fussy dynamics; having blossomed to life it is capped by a noble, legato, determinedly unmilitaristic peroration. An air of Bundestag rhetoric hangs over René Pape’s solo but he and his colleagues blend well, backed by a chorus that ideally mixes youth and experience. They look rather lost in a flat-ceilinged conference-hall space; but the sound-mixing places everything in perspective, as does Runnicles’s unfussy direction. Not every Ninth need storm the heavens.