Big-boned and big-hearted, Dvořák’s late symphonic music has found a good match in the Houston Symphony – on the whole. For when it comes to sheer vitality and warmth, this Texan ensemble doesn’t hold back. Nor does it pass up opportunities to squeeze out every last decibel.

In a symphony often described as ‘Wagnerian’, that trait should serve them well. So it’s lucky that Dvořák’s Seventh, with its operatic trajectory and thunderous climaxes, fits the bill. Andrés Orozco-Estrada’s is an interpretation full of theatricality, with a sure sense of the monumental. It’s all there in the broad sense, in his far-sighted approach to structure and pacing. It comes out, too, on a local level: in the sweeping vistas of the opening movement, the stabbing violence he brings to the Scherzo and, most of all, the raging culmination to the finale. What doesn’t always come across is the sense of refinement so noticeable in Marin Alsop’s release with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Her approach to the Scherzo yokes a sense of drama with a lightness and charm that eludes Orozco-Estrada, and for all the warmth in his take on the symphony’s emotional centrepiece – the Andante – it doesn’t quite shimmer like Alsop’s.

The Eighth Symphony, too, could do with a wider palette. At times, the Houston is all brawn at the expense of flexibility, not least in the opening few bars, where Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony find much more nuance. There are some arresting moments of softness – in the woodwinds’ delicate shaping of the birdcalls, for example, and the tiptoeing of the strings in the Scherzo. For the most part, though, what we admire is the power of the orchestral tuttis. Here is a thrilling first movement, a strikingly muscular Andante, a finale that takes ogre-like strides. Even if some of it verges on the brash, there’s no denying that Orozco-Estrada knows how to fire up his army.