Would it be fanciful to suggest that there’s something distinctly Netherlandish about this interpretation of Brahms’s D major Serenade? Jan Willem de Vriend emphasises the music’s rusticity while maintaining a tight grip on orchestral detail – an odd balance of exuberance and sobriety that, at its best, evokes a peasant scene by Bruegel.

The Hague Residentie Orchestra adopts many aspects of historically informed performance practice, with minimal vibrato from the strings and natural-sounding horns, creating a varied, vibrant colour palette that’s particularly effective in boisterous passages (try, say, 2'58" in the first movement). There’s subtle expressivity, too: note the way the players heed Brahms’s dolce indication in the eerie opening section of the first Scherzo, for instance, or the shapely phrasing of the first movement’s lyrical second theme.

At times, however, de Vriend’s taut control serves to neutralise the music’s character. Thus, while he sets an appropriately flowing tempo for the Adagio ma non troppo, the phrases often seem imprisoned by the bar-lines. And in the final Allegro, although the dotted rhythms have a delightful snap and the winds and brass buzz merrily, there’s an underlying stiffness – a metric regularity – that prevents the music from taking wing.

De Vriend’s way with the Haydn Variations is similarly frustrating. Following a sonorous and delightfully phrased presentation of the St Antoni Chorale, the conductor pushes too hard in the first variation (it’s marked poco più animato – a little more animated – after all), leaning too heavily on the down-beats. The second variation lacks the requisite faux-gypsy fire, and most of the subsequent variations could use a generous dollop of charm and wit. The recorded sound is vivid but slightly tubby.