Whether or not Simone Young decides to record a complete Bruckner cycle with the Hamburg Philharmonic remains to be seen (I sincerely hope that she does) but what’s already evident is that her debut CD forays into this repertoire are both excellently performed and, in terms of the editions chosen, fairly innovative. It takes guts to start with the original versions of Symphonies Nos 2, 3, 4, 8 and now No 1 (albeit with some revisions – only Georg Tintner and the RSNO on Naxos go for the original 1866 unrevised “Linz” version of the First).

Young’s choice of the Nowak Linz score is less “original” than tackling the other “first” versions: with this particular edition of the First she is up against Karajan, Barenboim, Jochum, Abbado and Skrowaczewski. Not that their catalogue presence need bother her too much. Here is a Bruckner conductor who understands where the music is going and the contextual significance of detail. Young seems at one with Bruckner’s sound world, how the music breathes and how to balance weighty brass without letting them overwhelm the rest of the orchestra. And she feels the First Symphony’s abundant poetry, especially in the first movement’s second subject and that wonderful moment towards the end of the Adagio where there are such vivid premonitions of the Ninth’s Adagio. The recorded sound settles for the broader canvas whereas, say, Karajan (BPO, DG) and Jochum (Dresden Staatkapelle, EMI) favour more prominent focusing for the strings.

What I like most about this performance, and about others in the series that I have so far heard (Nos 2 and 8), is its mixture of drama and warmth, its sense of journeying through a sizeable, open landscape (Young is, after all, Australian!). As recent Bruckner series go, I’d rate hers, Marek Janowski’s with the Suisse Romande (Pentatone) and Marcus Bosch’s spacious-sounding Aachen Symphony Orchestra set (Coviello Classics, now almost complete) pretty high on the list.