Glancing at the running time of 56 minutes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Thomas Dausgaard has chosen to perform one of the shorter editions of Bruckner’s Third Symphony. In fact, this is the original 1873 version of the score, Bruckner’s longest symphony in terms of bar count. Dausgaard’s is the swiftest performance on record, almost a minute faster than Norrington’s recording and notably faster than the versions by Blomstedt (63 minutes), Nézet-Séguin (72 minutes) and Tintner (78 minutes).

Dausgaard’s opening tempo isn’t quite as speedy as Norrington’s and his phrasing of the second subject allows more room for the music to breathe, but his tendency to view crescendos as an invitation to increase speed results in a quicker account of the movement overall. The Adagio opens in unhurried fashion but it’s not long before Dausgaard is keen to get things moving here, too, and as the volume increases towards the principal climax of the movement, the music starts to sound harried. The performance of the Scherzo, by contrast, is finely paced, with a lovely performance of the Trio, and the finale generally responds well to his energetic approach.

For much of the journey, Dausgaard’s performance is an involving and exciting one, and towards the end of the Adagio, as Bruckner quotes the ‘sleep’ motif from Wagner’s Die Walküre, the result is breathtaking. The orchestral playing and recording are also very fine. Ultimately, however, I’m inclined to feel a slightly more spacious approach would have resulted in a deeper realisation of Bruckner’s ambitious symphonic conception. The Adagio and finale run only a minute longer in Blomstedt’s recording but the extra time brings a performance that sounds both more composed and more Brucknerian, as does Nézet-Séguin’s fine Dresden recording.