Twenty years ago, much was made of an attempt by Sir Charles Mackerras to recover a performing tradition familiar to Brahms, by styling the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as a new Meiningen Court ensemble and paying heed to some interpretative hints left for the symphonies by Fritz Steinbach, who succeeded Hans von Bülow at Meiningen and was praised by the composer for his fidelity to the spirit as well as the letter of his scores. Now comes the Swiss-Italian Orchestra of Lugano, sounding considerably better drilled under its chief conductor Markus Poschner than in Hermann Scherchen’s unforgettably rough and ready traversal of Beethoven symphonies (on Accord) or, for that matter, on the occasion of the ensemble’s London concert in December 2015 under its principal guest conductor, Vladimir Ashkenazy.

The bass weight missing from a string section of 8.8.6.5.3 throws the spotlight on the orchestra’s winds, in which the first clarinet in particular shines with much playing of soloistic refinement on an unusual-looking, possibly older instrument. Lack of numbers tells less in the to and fro of first-movement arguments or even the swinging themes of finales than the espressivo unfolding of slow movements: Brahms referred to the Meiningen orchestra as ‘von Bülow’s brilliant string quintet’ with characteristically forked pen.

There is much ‘pushing forwards and holding back’ of the basic pulse, as Brahms recommended in a much-studied letter to Joseph Joachim. On Telarc (10/97), Mackerras often pressed on whereas Poschner tends towards indulgence. The reprise of the Third Symphony’s ineffable Allegretto almost fails to arrive: one dead spot in what is otherwise the most exciting and wholly successful of the four symphonies, with a justifiably protracted and sonorously balanced final chord.

Poschner brings more light and less shade than is now fashionable to the Second Symphony (the Allegretto has a winning lilt, and third movements in general come off well) and a Schumannesque, impulsive vigour to the opening movement of the First. However, I miss a sense of jeopardy in the Fourth and the First’s finale, which begins with all the tension of a standoff in a model village and ends with a fussily managed showdown. Within similarly self imposed limits of scale, with more integrated tempos and playing of considerably greater dynamic refinement from the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Paavo Berglund (Ondine, 8/01) achieves so much more.

I am unconvinced that the filming adds much. Every important entry is ticked off and there are half-hearted attempts to vary first-movement exposition repeats (all of them taken) by showing different angles of the same players. A more serious deficiency lies in the constricted sound, which is abruptly damped at tuttis, making a nonsense of any dynamic gradation above mezzo-forte, and throws a wet towel over the whole, otherwise admirable enterprise. Clicking to play through an entire symphony cues up a short sequence of lakeside Lugano maddeningly soundtracked by a big tune extracted from the symphony that begins seconds later. Poschner’s single-minded and often compellingly rhetorical way with Brahms is better experienced in a 2011 audio-only recording of the Third and Fourth with the Bremen Philharmonic, on the Dreyer Gaido label.