Simax’s valuable complete-Beethoven- orchestral- works set amounts to a Beethoven refresher course, which means the fruits of modern scholarship gainfully employed (Jonathan Del Mar being the pivotal scholar), the eradication of interpretative “bad habits” and a farewell to the image of Beethoven as a scowling Teutonic heavyweight. In that respect alone Dausgaard’s Choral Symphony is PC almost to a fault: it’s a swift, unmannered, clear-textured presentation in which the recorded balance reveals all, the playing style eschews old-world vibrato and, come the closing Presto, the release of tension seems to justify all that has gone before. There’s no sentimentality but there is beauty, certainly among dialoguing string lines en route to the climactic statement of the “Ode to Joy” theme. In the first movement I’d have welcomed stronger projection from the strings and a more cataclysmic central climax, but what you do have is a clarification of formal, or structural, logic, rather like being able to see an argument from all sides. So often with this work we’re given a partial viewpoint, though Claudio Abbado in Berlin (DG, 11/08) manages objectivity without us noticing. With Dausgaard I’m too often aware that the chosen style is “how they do Beethoven these days”, whereas with Abbado all that matters is the music.

The singers are first-rate and the fillers work well. It’s good to have the Gratulations-Menuett, which, as George Hall tells us in his excellent booklet-notes, was originally written for the projected Tenth Symphony. The Consecration of the House Overture has plenty of Handelian gaiety but no real grit. And that’s what I miss most in these performances, especially the symphony. They’re Beethoven after an effective counselling session: lively, with plenty to say – but “adjusted”.