What a difference a conductor makes. Where the Bamberg SO’s 2022 recording of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony under its current Chief Conductor Jakub Hrůša was something of a non-event (Accentus, 7/24), this Bruckner Second from the same orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach bids fair to merit a place on any shortlist of preferred recordings.

Where a choice between the two conductors is concerned, Eschenbach holds all the cards. First, he’s been closely associated with the Bamberg orchestra for more than 40 years (since before Hrůša was born, in fact). Secondly, he’s an experienced Brucknerian, with a string of fine recordings to his credit, not least an approved account of the Second Symphony with the Houston SO (Koch, 3/97).

Reviewing that Houston recording, I noted that Eschenbach ‘sets good tempos, moulds them intelligently and projects them with fervour’, adding that the playing itself ‘reveals high levels of concentration and musical endeavour’. The same could be said of this reading and the playing of the Bambergers (even down to the presence of yet another ‘posse of full-throated bassoons’). Hearing them playing Brahms and Dvořák under Hrůša at this year’s Edinburgh Festival I found little that was out of the ordinary. Yet at home in Bamberg, under Eschenbach, the no-nonsense skills of every section of the orchestra, from flutes to double basses, help conjure up a performance that catches well the symphony’s captivating blend of honest craftsmanship and emotional allure.

There have been some changes down the years. The Houston performance was recorded live (and heavily promoted as such) whereas this Bamberg version is a studio production carefully engineered by a team from Bavarian Radio in the orchestra’s 1400-seat Joseph Keilberth Hall. The sound is good, not unlike that provided by Austrian Radio for Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic live in Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus in 2016. That said, there’s no beating Vienna’s Musikverein as a recording venue – witness the added spaciousness with no loss of impact achieved by EMI’s engineers for Giulini’s justly renowned 1974 recording with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Eschenbach’s other change concerns text. In Houston he played the full 1877 version (Haas, 1938) as drawn up by Bruckner before cuts were suggested by Vienna’s imperial court conductor Johann Herbeck. In Bamberg, Eschenbach reverts to the 1965 Nowak edition, omitting all but one of the passages deemed extraneous by Nowak on the basis of Bruckner’s eventual acceptance of their omission. The one retained passage is in the Andante: the decorative counterstatement at fig C (bar 48, 3'13"), which Bruckner had appended to the initial statement of the movement’s shy little second theme. Played as it is here, it’s a passage of unusual beauty that sits well within Eschenbach’s tender unfolding of one of Bruckner’s loveliest slow movements.

Eschenbach will be 85 next February, yet his Bruckner, like that of the late Stanisław Skrowaczewski, is as wise as ever, and no jot less vital.