It is not unusual to hear the music of composers of the Baroque period being subjected to what in literary circles is known as speed-reading. But this is the first time I have heard the practice applied to Bruckner. “Performance duration in the region of 80 minutes,” says the preface to Robert Haas’s 1937 critical edition of the Fifth Symphony. Järvi and his players dispatch it in 62. The Adagio is raced through in a mere 11 minutes: this for a movement that cannot be plausibly played in fewer than 15. Harnoncourt in his fine Vienna Philharmonic recording is also fairly brisk, more Allegretto than Adagio, treating the composer’s expression of despair much as he might treat a threnody by Bach. Furtwängler, somewhatsurprisingly, takes a not dissimilar view, as does Welser-Möst. What distinguishes these performances, and Benjamin Zander’s in his remarkable two-disc performance-cum-memoir and spoken analysis, is that they have something to say in human terms. Järvi merely sounds efficient and disengaged.

Järvi is too good a technician not to take his players with him. Indeed the Dutch musicians display a certain daredevil nonchalance as they breeze their way through the epic 635-bar finale. Years ago the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Stadlen landed himself in Private Eye’s “Pseuds’ Corner” when he wrote “Surely we have a right to be bored by Bruckner”. On this occasion, chance would be a fine thing.