'The real purpose of using a small orchestra’, Thomas Dausgaard told Gramophone’s Andrew Mellor regarding his recording of Brahms’s Second (2/18), ‘is to allow us to appreciate all the music that’s there, so that it comes to life in every corner, rather than becoming a mesh of sound.’ Now, with this release of the Fourth, Dausgaard’s Brahms symphony cycle is complete, and I’d say he’s more than proved his point. Indeed, the transparency he and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra achieve is one of his set’s primary virtues. Take the brief contrapuntal passage at 2'03" in the E minor Symphony’s roisterous third movement, for example – so often this sounds thickly scrawled, but here its curls are elegantly svelte. Or try at 3'34" in the Andante moderato, where the delicate texture and sense of intimacy put me in mind of the Op 88 String Quintet’s incandescent slow movement.

The flip side, of course, is that a small string section sounds small, even in the big moments. Dausgaard manages this fairly well, I think, often using a subtle broadening of tempo to compensate for the lack of weight, as he does near the end of the first movement. But having just heard the way Philippe Jordan has the Vienna Symphony violins make that movement’s final phrase practically cataclysmic (10/20), I felt a bit cheated by the SCO’s relative sonic slightness. Still, I think Dausgaard’s account is so finely shaded and thrilling in its own way – his pacing and feeling for drama are thoroughly compelling – that it really demands to be heard.

I wish I was as convinced by his Tragic Overture, however. It’s appropriately sinewy, sure, but so fast – Brahms marks it Allegro ma non troppo – that the sense of struggle is minimised. On the other hand, his arrangement of nine Hungarian Dances are ridiculously charming. (Only two of the 21 were orchestrated by the composer; the rest are scattered over the previous releases.) This is not in any way how Brahms would have done it, that’s for certain, but if you’re enticed by, say, Schoenberg’s arrangement of the G minor Piano Quartet – check out the trilling woodwinds and brass in the Trio of No 2 – these vividly coloured (and characterfully played) dances should put a big smile on your face, and at times maybe even a tear in your eye.