These are live performances, recorded in Vienna in 2007. The Brahms has a real sense of occasion, with Arabella Steinbacher projecting the music’s different phases in a compelling way, and a rich orchestral backing that’s especially notable for the strength and significance given to Brahms’s important bass-lines. Occasional roughness of tone, in passages where Steinbacher is playing forcefully (for instance near the start of the finale) only adds to the feeling of immediacy. In the first movement, Steinbacher’s concern to find the right colour and intensity for each passage occasionally leads her to slacken the tempo to excess, resulting in the music acquiring a dreamy, static quality. Even in the opening orchestral tutti the first full forte passage seems somewhat ponderous. So, overall, I’m happier with Isabelle Faust’s recent account; her stronger sense of momentum gives to many phrases a touching quality missed by Steinbacher’s greater expansiveness.

The Schumann is, in most respects, very impressive, marred by one or two blemishes (imperfect high violin notes in the Scherzo) and a slightly strident fortissimo sound. But the interpretation includes a few unconvincing oddities. The Andante sounds beautiful but is rather slow, with somewhat detached phrasing and a pedantic insistence on not aligning the triplets with the dotted rhythms. In the Scherzo’s Trio, each phrase gradually slows down – a most disturbing effect. And I can’t understand why the symphony’s last three chords should be so grotesquely held back. Small eccentricities, maybe, but in such a strongly unified work they do attract undue attention.