The opening bars of the Beethoven Ninth either look forward to, or back from, Bruckner. Depending upon where you stand. With Klaus Tennstedt there was never any doubt. He had seen the future, he had experienced it. But there seemed to be no more tomorrows in store for him. And so it proved to be.

This penultimate-night-of-the-Proms performance from September 1985 is a characteristically edge-of-precipice job. It’s the kind of performance which even as I write is creeping back into fashion after a term of sojourning and learning and refreshing ourselves through ‘period’ practices. It’s big – no, huge – and expansive in the manner of a Klemperer or a Furtwängler or any of the giants that bestrode this work like a colossus. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso reads the first movement directive. Tennstedt takes ma non troppo at its word and poco with a large pinch of the proverbial salt. The Albert Hall seems barely adequate to contain it. Actually, we hear rather too much of the notorious acoustic. By today’s standards it’s too much of an overview with inner parts (particularly the woodwinds) compromised by a lack of focus and immediacy in the tuttis.

But the ears adjust and the performance, for all its heavy-handed imperfections (there’s an early breakdown of ensemble in the scherzo, for instance, doubtless occasioned by the maestro’s erratic beat), has the determination of a seasoned climber with his sights set firmly on the summit. The word ‘elemental’ is probably over-used in respect of Tennstedt performances, but that’s why I use it again. Because it’s the right word. The sudden ominous presence of the bassoon (5'26") as we veer with some circumspection into the no man’s land of the impending development is a case in point. At the climax – which is predictably seismic – we can visualise the maddened maestro, long legs astride, arms flailing.

The orchestra that Tennstedt would tearfully describe as ‘his’ orchestra (for that the London Philharmonic undoubtedly was) always went the extra distance for him but here in the slow movement they achieve a humbling nobility with especially poetic solo winds, first clarinet leading. The attacca into the finale is for once really shocking and so (if you’ve been listening to Norrington or Gardiner recently) is some of what follows. All the traditional rhetoric is pulled out with pride – the end suggests a cosmic Magic Flute. I sometimes wonder how Tennstedt would fit, or not, into today’s world. His time was then. But he remains a blast. From the past.