Long before I acquired my first LP of a Beethoven symphony, I recall hearing the BBC Northern Orchestra under the eminently reliable George Hurst playing the Pastoral Symphony on a BBC Home Service lunchtime concert. In those days no one would have dreamt of recording the Nine with Hurst and the BBC Northern. The Beethoven symphonies were the preserve of “great conductors” – Toscanini and Bruno Walter, the newly re-emergent Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber and the young Karajan – whose recordings were dutifully chronicled by famous initials in the pages of Gramophone.

That’s all changed. “Complete Symphonies Vol 1” reads the subheading on the cover of this new CD. Nowadays when discs are relatively cheap to make, most front-rank orchestras, and some that are not quite that, feel compelled to market their own set of the Nine.

Jan Willem de Vriend and his players are the latter-day equivalent of Hurst and the old BBC Northern, and none the worse for that. Methods have changed at the margins. De Vriend comes to Beethoven from the Baroque and Classical end of the repertory and as such is minded to use “period” brass and timpani, though not as far as I could tell “period” seating. Tempi are probably a touch brisker than Hurst’s would have been but de Vriend is no metronome junky. These are strong, thrustful performances which make sense in the terms of the music in hand and the orchestra’s own character and competence. If I enjoyed the Pastoral more than the Fourth, it is probably because in performances as plain as these pictures add enchantment to the view.