There is much to be said for this purposeful yet agreeable Gothenburg recording of the Brahms Double Concerto. Soloist Sara Trobäck Hesselink is concertmaster of the Gothenburg Symphony, Claes Gunnarsson its principal cello. Both are fine players who respond with civility and spirit to Järvi’s cogent and forthright lead. The recording, which dates from 2004, is first-rate.

EMI has twice coupled the Brahms Double and Beethoven Triple concertos by marrying classic contemporary recordings featuring similar artists. With Hesselink and Gunnarsson donning their Trio Poseidon hats in the Beethoven, Chandos appears to go one better by using the same team in both works. Alas, it is not as simple as that.

No longer judged the bumpkin work it was once thought to be, the Triple Concerto is to all intents and purposes a sinfonia concertante for violin and cello with a simpler comprimario piano part (too prominently balanced in the new recording) conceived by Beethoven for his pupil, Archduke Rudolph. Beethoven worked assiduously on the concerto, fashioning new procedures and creating a glorious, often high-lying role for the solo cello.

What the work is not is a concerto for piano trio and orchestra, a point even the Beaux Arts struggled to refute (Philips, 4/78 – nla). The finest recordings have featured cellists of princely standing: Fournier with Schneiderhan, Anda and Fricsay (DG, 10/61 – nla) or Rostropovich with Oistrakh and Richter, a recording Richter later peevishly disowned, bad-mouthing Rostropovich for colluding with Karajan over their tempo (par for the course, as it happens) in the brief but intense Largo.

Goodness knows what Richter would have made of the new recording. Järvi sets an even slower tempo in the Largo, where an over-zealous cellist is upstaged by his violinist’s vibrato-laden descants. Järvi himself seems out of sorts with the piece, making for cruder, coarser music-making than in the Brahms.