There are those who attend the opening of this piece as they might the opening of Parsifal – slowly, hieratically. Not Donald Runnicles. The beauty is in the humanity and from the moment of its appearance he has the longer view of the cello-led melody in mind. Indeed, the defining character of his Bruckner on this showing is the singing fluency of the line. Everything has shape and purpose and a naturalness of phrasing that often finds greater kinship with Schubert than with Wagner.

All the lyric ideas are kept moving, brassy proclamations carry us effortlessly towards and across even the most problematic transition, and the atmosphere is poetic without being precious or indeed pious. That extraordinary moment in the first movement where the second part of the great cello theme re-emerges against a tremulous crescendo of violin and timpani becomes something very personal and carries an emotional intensity far removed from the merely mythic. And then to the great Adagio, which is possessed here of an intimacy that one might not normally associate with it. It is tender and communicative and, if you like, more human-scaled. Bruckner, the man, is not lost in the grandeur of his symphonic landscape.

And Bruckner, the outdoor man, is earthily conveyed in the exhilaration of the Scherzo and the bluff assertiveness of the finale. They ‘connect’ here in an interesting way, the latter less portentous and more of a cosmic dance than it sometimes sounds; the flip-side of the Scherzo. The playing of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is terrifically robust but deeply felt, too.

Those who favour a grander, more expansive, more monolithic approach to this music may find the scale of Runnicles’s reading a shade diminishing. But be in no doubt that it is thoughtful and radiant and eminently musical, and that the modesty as well as the humanity of Bruckner’s vision is faithfully realised.