Not always echt Claudio Abbado. A flaccid introduction to No 39 doesn’t bode well. Mellow orchestral articulation and distant timpani subdue the theatrical force of this Adagio which is not alleviated in the main Allegro. Abbado tightens the tension in tuttis but slackens the line elsewhere; and only towards the end does he steadily build momentum and attack. A similar dichotomy dogs the Andante, the two-part first subject for strings loosely controlled while the rest of the movement is cogently expressed - mostly so the sections in F minor and B minor. Abbado then settles into a degree of consistency but his heart isn’t fully in this work. There are none of the individual touches and recreative insights that he lavishes on No 40.

Don’t however expect ‘great tragedy’ as sensed by Toscanini. Melancholy, in many facets, pervades this performance of the revised score to which Mozart added clarinets and rewrote the parts for oboes. In an interpretation also recorded live, but a year after No 39, Abbado pays much attention to instrumental balance, thereby clarifying lines and refining textures. Unusually, perhaps, he finds an air of gentle resignation in the first movement, but by working from within the music, Abbado illuminates the message and carries the listener along with him, as he does in the three other movements as well. Here is conducting tied to expressive, imaginative musicianship adding up to the totality of an experience greater than the sum of its parts.