Take it for granted that the playing of the Simón Bolívar orchestra is very good. But Gustavo Dudamel isn’t pre-eminent in confronting and realising the transcendence of a work totally new in its day. Beethoven proclaims epic proportions from the beginning, but Dudamel offers instead a fairly routine first movement. And, by including the once-popular spurious extension to the trumpet theme beginning at bar 659, he turns the unpredictable into an overloud commonplace, dissipating the power of the real climax nine bars later. Giuseppe Sinopoli follows suit with similar results, and though he doesn’t repeat the exposition, he shares other points of view with Dudamel. Neither is close to the metronome requirement here; nor in the second movement, with greater consequences. Again, their tempi are comparable, remarkable in not matching Beethoven’s Adagio assai to his pulse marking of quaver=80, time signature two in a bar. At their pace the Funeral March becomes a dirge, more so in Dudamel’s lethargic traversal replete with a ponderous fugue.

Much the best of his conducting is heard in the Scherzo, though Sinopoli is even more adept at lightening string textures and balancing wind detail. He has a better grip on the finale too, but falls at the Poco andante section, joining Dudamel in treating the episode as a slow movement.

Both performances of the symphony don’t make the grade, yet the lilt and languor in Sinopoli’s interpretation of Ravel’s Valses are worth hearing. Good as Dudamel’s couplings are, they rather pale beside the impetuously dynamic conducting of Riccardo Chailly – whose Egmont, in particular, is transparent of texture, astutely accented and superb in feeling for dramatic point and purpose. As is his Eroica. Though Chailly, too, inserts the trumpet extension in the first movement, he is careful not to let it impact on the true summit, while his finale delightfully captures Beethoven’s funny side. Add the reflections of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Simon Rattle – who, like Chailly, separate the violins – and the collective emotional power of an exceptional trio is yours. Talented he certainly is, but Dudamel still has a long road to travel.