This is the seventh disc of Bruckner symphonies that Ivor Bolton has recorded for the Oehms label. I confess I had not registered this series until now but the idea of recording the Bruckner symphonies with what is basically a chamber orchestra brings very distinctive results. This No 4 in fact fills in the gap between Bolton’s recordings of all the other symphonies between the Third and Ninth. He has been working regularly with the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg for many years and since 2004 has been their chief conductor.

The quality that emerges in all four movements is delicacy. Bolton has clearly achieved a remarkable rapport with the players and I have never heard this orchestra, whether live or on disc, playing better. The very opening, hushed and intense, establishes the delicacy from the start, and so it is in the lyrical second subject. The easy lyricism of the slow movement is then enhanced by the refinement of the orchestra’s strings, as are the quieter moments of the last two movements, such as the Ländler-like Trio of the Scherzo.

Though the chamber qualities of the orchestra are the result of reduced strings, there is no question of wind and above all heavy brass being reduced. That consistently makes for a performance of heightened contrasts, massive and noble. That is so even in the opening exposition of the first movement; and when it come to the Scherzo, with its stuttering chords and heavyweight brass interjections, the lilt of the music is emphasised. No doubt many Brucknerians will miss the rich cushion of string sound that you find in more conventional accounts but arguably a performance on this scale comes closer to what the composer himself would have expected.

In the finale, the heightened dynamic contrasts are if anything more emphatically established, rounding off the performance majestically. The Oehms recording is first-rate, made not in the limited space of the Mozarteum itself but in the Grosses Festpielhaus. Altogether an outstanding issue.