Consistently satisfying cycles of the four Brahms symphonies are rare on record. A skilled Kapellmeister might establish a line through all four works; Boult managed this, as did James Loughran in his finely articulated mid-1970s Hallé cycle which remains to this day an outstanding bargain. Not the least of the problems is the dichotomy that exists between the First and Third symphonies – both deeply personal works – and their musical antitypes, the organically conceived and wondrously self-sufficient Second and Fourth symphonies. It requires a particular kind of mind and technique to cope with these immensities. Furtwängler had the wherewithal, as did Sanderling, a conductor much admired by Rattle, in his 1971 72 Dresden cycle. There is also Klemperer whose 1956 57 Philharmonia cycle remains an object lesson in Brahmsian discourse, lofty and alive from first note to last.

Forging a comparable discourse with the Berlin Philharmonic is no easy task, as Simon Rattle is no doubt shrewdly aware. Furtwängler had his own methods, drawing without fear or favour on the orchestra’s richly layered sound and visceral manner. A First and Third man, he highlighted the darker elements of the Second and treated the Fourth as unmitigated tragedy. Karajan, a Second and Fourth man who spent 50 years grappling with the First like a climber confronting some unattainable Alpine peak, first clarified the Berlin sound, then rebuilt it to epic proportions, as we can hear in his 1987 DG recording of the First or the tumultuous performance of that same symphony he conducted in London in October 1988 (Testament, 1/09).

During the Abbado years, it was Harnoncourt who effected the most significant change of direction with his live 1996 97 cycle. He lightened the sound, clipped the phrase lengths and revealed the pre-Classical elements in Brahms’s thinking and orchestration.

Not everything works but at its current super-budget price it is a set any interested Brahmsian should hear. After Rattle’s radically styled Vienna Philharmonic Beethoven cycle, you might imagine that his Brahms would be closer to Harnoncourt’s than Karajan’s. This is not the case. Taking on the mantle of conductor as custodian, he has gone back to the pre-1989 way of doing things. Where Harnoncourt rather underplays the First Symphony, giving it a decorous Schumannesque feel, Rattle’s reading is one in which the inwardness and charm of the exquisitely realised inner movements offset the breadth and lyric power of the surrounding drama. Less riven than Furtwängler’s reading or the later Karajan’s, it is a powerfully directed performance, measured and humane.

The EMI recording is an “in concert” affair, more closely focused, with a less natural-sounding ambience than the recording Teldec gave Harnoncourt in this same hall. Impressive in the First Symphony, it seems cloudier and more claustrophobic in the Second. Clearly the reading has something to do with this, with its bottom-heavy string sound and evened-out dynamics. I find a lack of narrative variation here; too little play of light and shade as we journey through the symphony’s changing landscapes.

We return to memorability in the Third where we hear again the kind of exquisitely quiet string- and horn-playing – the inner movements rich in beauty and quiet foreboding – which we missed in the Second. Rattle’s pacing of the first movement is almost as broad as Sanderling’s, with the exposition repeat which Sanderling omits adding to the range. Here Rattle’s finely moulded direction sustains the discourse. Tension occasionally slackens in meditative passages but this is preferable to the unnuanced approach we have in the Second Symphony.

Sadly the performance of the Fourth is again bottom-heavy, with slowish tempi that rob the music of its edge and tragic severity. As Michael Oliver observed when reviewing EMI’s Furtwängler set, “If one of a conductor’s functions is to reveal the composer’s intentions, another is to convince you that those intentions matter”. It is this latter dimension that Rattle’s Fourth currently lacks. Still, two successes out of four is not bad. In the great Brahms handicap that’s about par for the course.

As for Eschenbach’s live Tokyo Fourth, when an old friend commended the Sanderling cycle to Sir Adrian Boult, he said, “Let me hear the Tragic Overture and the finale of the Fourth”. I recalled that request as I listened to the young players of the 2005 Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra vainly attempting to come to terms with the Fourth’s all-consuming finale. This is the kind of performance whose inadequacies become more apparent at each new hearing, the very last thing you want from a gramophone record.