Over quarter of a century separates Simon Rattle’s first recording of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, made under studio conditions with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and this new version, derived from concert performances with the London Symphony Orchestra. In his review of the earlier version, Stephen Johnson wrote admiringly of the interpretation’s ‘superbly controlled long phrases’ but also missed ‘the tiny expressive inflexions that bring human intimacy to the big gestures’. This new recording brings an entirely different conception: not only more idiomatic but swifter, more spontaneous and more involving. Tempo changes and dynamic contrasts are carefully observed but adroitly applied, bringing an engrossing build-up to the cymbal clash in the second movement and a compelling journey through the contrasting episodes of levity and solemnity in the finale. The recording is notably better than many sourced in the difficult acoustic of the Barbican, helping convey a sense of mystery during the symphony’s more luminously scored passages.

The last few years have brought highly recommendable recordings of the Seventh Symphony by Haitink, Gilbert and Roth, and this new version is at least their equal if not quite displacing long-established recommendations by Karajan, Wand and Blomstedt. One additional point to note is that this is the first recording of the new Urtext Edition of the symphony by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs. Having said that, the booklet note, authored by Cohrs himself, does not detail the differences from the familiar Haas and Nowak versions, and very few are conspicuous even when following the performance with a score.