Every culture gets the Beethoven Ninth it deserves. This is not the Ninth to pair with A Survivor from Warsaw, as Erich Leinsdorf and Michael Gielen have done over the years, but a celebration of the symphony’s place within Far Eastern culture, especially at Christmastime, when it has become emblematic of both treasured familial unity and a yearning for spiritual catharsis in lands dominated by atheism and religions which nurture a calm balance between man and nature.

From the strenuous violas at 6'30" you may hear both the literal working-out of a grand design, and the detail of a recording and interpretation that’s too democratic for its own good. The strings of the Seoul Philharmonic bring a lovely, warm glow to the opening hymn; but after an uneasy gear-change (3'50") the song of the Andante drifts free of its mooring like a skiff on a boating lake. Rhetorical caesuras halt the movement’s first crisis before a massive broadening announces the main climax, violas again inflating the aftermath to a parody of grief (Beethoven marks them pianissimo). Couple this with a massive chorus, full-throttle soloists, a scampering Scherzo considerably above Beethoven’s metronome mark while every other tempo is below it, a Trio that broadens out at one phrase end before quickening into the next, sudden sfp dynamics and staccato/legato contrasts inserted here and there for dramatic ‘interest’, and you have school-of Mengelberg, which may or may not disconcert you but sounds distinctly odd in 2015.