This is the sort of set that makes me grateful that classical recordings are still being made. As a refresher course in Schumann symphonies, you won’t find anything better: the overall transparency of each performance, the tautness, interpretative ‘edge’ (sometimes bordering on danger), warmth and determination to exploit to the full the many contrasts that keep each score so endlessly stimulating, all these virtues and more serve to focus the music in a unique way. I should tell you that the performances of Symphonies Nos 1 and 3 are not the ones on CD (RCA) that I reviewed last March and that were awarded Gramophone Choice status. Those were recorded at the Funkhaus Berlin in December 2009 and April 2010, whereas these 2011 performances were filmed in the acoustically impressive Pier2, a former dockyard building turned music workshop and film set at the port of Bremen. Similar performances though, and sound for that matter, with maybe a hint more inner detail on the CD.

Regular readers will know that as a rule I’m not one for straight orchestral concert DVDs – I object to all the visual distractions – but these productions (directed by Christian Berger) are a cut above average. Aside from the performances themselves, which are subject to sensitive and unobtrusive camerawork, there are gentle masterclasses on each symphony where Järvi offers chapter and verse, not only on the music but on the circumstances of Schumann’s life when the pieces were written. As part of the educating process, individual players are invited to perform key passages solo, often dovetailing with the orchestra to provide a proper context. Their comments are not infrequently as engaging as Järvi’s own and you feel, after watching these absorbing mini-documentaries, that the orchestra’s overriding interpretative principle is ‘nothing without good reason’.

As to detail, I like the way secondary lines ‘tell’ without barging to the fore, and the clarity of the string lines – especially the violins where, in the finale of the Second Symphony, by being divided left and right of the rostrum they create a vivid antiphonal swirl. In the finale of the First Symphony, after the appearance of the perky Kreisleriana theme on the woodwinds, Järvi slightly broadens the tempo for the strings’ gruff response. Ebb and flow is very much his thing; in the first movement of the Fourth, for example, where the second subject of the main Allegro broadens expressively, and again in the Rhenish, some minor shifts in tempo, nothing obtrusive, but always supportive of the principal arguments. Interesting, watching him cue the Fourth’s ‘Romanze’ on the heels of its first movement. The initial impression is of a potential miscue – the music actually sounds as if it could accommodate another chord – but the now popular option of bringing in the movement attacca really does work in context. And how exhilarating to hear the finale of the Third carrying so little weight, a ‘Life’s Dance’ after the humbling solemnity of the previous ‘Cologne Cathedral’ movement.

All repeats are played and although some may take issue with the occasional fast tempo (ie the first Trio in the First Symphony’s Scherzo), nothing sounds musically illogical. Watching the players is a joy, and for this old CD-only Luddite to make that claim is saying something. The fact is that the DKB play as one. In my review of the RCA CD I suggested that the orchestra is ‘evidently manned by players who listen very closely to one another (these performances are rather like “chamber music writ large”)’, and watching them confirms that happy impression.

There will be times when contrasting CD options will queue for attention (Zacharias, Harnoncourt and Zinman among them) but I can’t imagine any sensitive music lover failing to respond to this artistically exceptional, beautifully filmed and expertly engineered set. It certainly gave me a great deal of pleasure.