Now into the 14th season of a projected 20-year stint as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Manfred Honeck has defended his focus on the standard classics by quoting an aphorism attributed to Mahler: ‘Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.’ This latest release presents subtly incendiary Brahms alongside an utterance of radically different stripe. The recordings were made (mostly) live in Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall prior to the onset of the pandemic.

The main work transmits an impression of interpretative renewal. Though capable of cushioned ‘European’ warmth, the Pittsburgh Symphony has a cleaner, brighter edge than traditionally associated with big-band Brahms. The winds make a tellingly linear contribution, not content with merely poking through saturated string tone at key points. The finessing of detail might be expected from this conductor, a former Vienna Philharmonic viola player, less so a reprise of the slow movement’s cello melody which, at least initially, throbs with the passion of a Leonard Bernstein. Tempos are fast, marginally outpacing those adopted by Carlos Kleiber with the Viennese, yet the music-making remains lyrically effusive by modern standards. It was Otto Klemperer’s idiosyncratic phrasing that sprang to mind in the Scherzo, notwithstanding Honeck’s defter take on joviality. As ever articulation is precisely honed, the smoothed-over and the brusque playfully juxtaposed. The triangle is nicely audible, timpani wonderfully crisp. The finale is again urgent with real dramatic sweep despite a diversity of expression some will find self-conscious. Honeck explains many of his unorthodox choices in an accompanying essay. Not wanting to be unduly influenced, I decided to listen first. In fact the booklet is as much a high-end production as the resplendent state-of-the art Soundmirror recorded sound from producer Dirk Sobotka and balance engineer Mark Donahue.

What of the makeweight? In the 1960s Samuel Barber drew a choral Agnus Dei from his Adagio for Strings, itself lately set down by this Pittsburgh team (2/18). In 2017 James MacMillan made the reverse journey, transforming his own a cappella Miserere, composed for and recorded by The Sixteen (Coro, 11/11). Honeck clearly believes the resulting Larghetto for Orchestra to be something more than Holy Minimalist kitsch. He has toured the piece and there’s no mistaking the rapt eloquence of the strings, nor the forceful New World delivery of the few brazen intrusions. Expert sound engineering helps convey the spatial element of a live performance, with solo trumpet and horn nicely distanced from the quiescent orchestral body towards the end. The Pittsburgh Symphony commissioned Christopher Rouse’s Rapture during Mariss Jansons’s time at the helm and it may be that MacMillan’s consolatory orchestral statement will endure similarly as a marker for the Honeck years. Unsurprisingly there are far fewer notes. All in all a provocative listen, beautifully packaged.