If you read Rainer Lepuschitz’s extensive booklet note before listening to these performances, as I did, you too may be surprised by what you hear. We’re told that Philippe Jordan and the Vienna Symphony give us ‘a new way’ of hearing Brahms’s symphonies, one that avoids the ‘rich, thick Brahms sound’ by aiming for ‘a more slender, more sensitive sonic image’. There’s discussion of how the symphonies relate to the composer’s vocal music (‘woodwinds sing as in arias and songs’ while ‘the strings are combined in motet-like or even madrigalistic polyphony’), as well as the importance of attending closely to Brahms’s ‘dynamic specifications’. Let’s set aside the fact that the fresh-scrubbed and trimmed-down ‘new’ approach Lepuschitz outlines was put forth by Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra more than two decades ago (Telarc, 10/97). More to the point is that, to my ears at least, Jordan’s interpretations are actually quite traditional – closer in spirit to Weingartner than to Mackerras and his historically informed successors.

The Vienna Symphony play with confidence and refinement in these live performances, although I wouldn’t say their sound is all that slender or ‘sensitive’ (whatever that means). Orchestral balance is adequate but in no way revelatory (microphone placement appears to place us a dozen rows or so from the stage in the Musikverein’s Goldener Saal). There’s some lovely woodwind-playing – try the yearning oboe solo at 2'23" in the slow movement of the First, and note, too, how stealthily the clarinet follows on its heels. Indeed, the clarinets seem oddly demure throughout, quite the opposite of aria-like. I’m more taken by the strings, honestly. They’re gloriously radiant in the First’s finale (listen at 1'05"); and at 7'35" in the Andante moderato of the Fourth, Jordan makes good on his claim about motet-like polyphony by giving equal weight to all the string parts, so it’s not just the usual melody and richly upholstered accompaniment. He’s generally attentive to dynamic markings, too, although that doesn’t stop him from appending directives of his own – inserting a disconcerting subito piano at 0'31" in the introduction of the First (presumably to make sense of the subsequent crescendo, which inexplicably begins at forte only to end at another forte), and adding an unwritten mezza voce at 14'13" in the opening movement of the Second (to breathtaking effect, in this case).

As for the interpretations in a larger sense, they’re a bit uneven but largely compelling. I crave more tempestuousness in the Allegro of the First (Jordan has the lurching rhythms move so elegantly, there’s hardly any sense of breathless urgency). From there, however, his reading gathers strength, with a delightfully bucolic third movement and a finale that conveys breadth and grandeur without skimping on detail. In the Allegro non troppo of the Second, again, I need greater volatility (surely the throbbing rhythmic accompaniment at 3'35" is meant to provide an undercurrent of agitation rather than a cheerful rum-tum-tum). And while the finale ends with a scalding burst of energy, it takes a little too long to come to a boil.

Jordan’s performance of the Third is by far the finest of the set. The syncopated, chugging string parts in the opening Allegro con brio thrillingly propel the music forward, and yet there’s a marvellous sense of ebb and flow. Listen, say, to the unabashed passion at 6'13", the richness of the colours at 7'08" (those sonorous basses and glowing horns), and then the exquisite dolce at 8'49". The finale, too, is superb, with an Allegro that’s not so fast that it hinders the orchestra from really digging in. I love how Jordan broadens the tempo very slightly at 3'51", like a film director slowly panning out to reveal a vast landscape (I only wish the shifting of gears back to speed at 5'06" had been managed a little more subtly, but that’s a minor cavil). His way with the Fourth Symphony is nearly as fine. He focuses more on structure than on sweep in the first movement, which may be more to your taste than to mine, but I have no reservations about the rest. The way he underscores the contrasts at the beginning of the slow movement (the pungency of the winds and mellow warmth of the strings) sets the stage for an unusually eventful reading, the third movement dances with hearty humour (notice, too, the playful gusts of scales at 0'53"), and the final chaconne is powerfully sculpted (the violins swooping in at 5'35" feels positively cataclysmic).

So while this isn’t a set I can recommend wholeheartedly, there are sufficient insights and moments (entire movements, even) to marvel at that it’s well worth hearing, and the Third and Fourth will handsomely repay repeated listening.