Brüggen mirrors Mozart’s love of clarinets in the balance at the beginning of No 39, the reverberation of Rotterdam’s De Doelen hall in this live recording adding warmth to the texture but also blurring the bass-line somewhat, timpani excepted. Played with hard sticks, they cut through in a majestic Adagio, Brüggen finding time to draw out a sense of longing from the rising notes of the flute flanking dotted rhythms, not edgily militant as they are in Mackerras’s performance. He shortens the note-values. Brüggen doesn’t; and his broad approach extends to the main Allegro, conjuring perhaps an image of the 19th century rather than its predecessor. But Brüggen, once in the forefront of historically informed practices, has gradually been ploughing his own furrow; and these discs offer examples of his current thoughts that nonetheless still incorporate swift minuets and the use of period instruments. Not heard anywhere is a literal sound-facsimile of notes. Brüggen interprets them as he feels fit.

How he feels about No 40 has changed in the 23 years since his last recording (Philips – nla). Though the outer movements, Molto allegro and Allegro assai respectively, are almost identical to their earlier pacing, accents are now more tellingly pointed, phrases more expressively shaped without compromising momentum. But the exposition repeat in the finale has been dropped and there are none in the Andante. Claudio Abbado, Benjamin Britten and Mackerras repeat both halves as instructed. And Brüggen obeys the similar marking in No 39’s finale yet, unlike others, preserves the surprise of an abrupt ending by giving the last bar a new twist the second time.

What of No 41, the largest in scale? Mackerras with modern instruments appears grand and thrusting, Brüggen initially more sober, impressed on by a dull acoustic and the lower pitch of the orchestra. But heroics aren’t muted; they are presented differently. So are the unwritten shadings in colour and meaning of the slow movement, the fugal finale mightily imposing, the purpose of observing every repeat in this work understood. As always, discretion replaces dogma.