Period brass – two each of Inventionshorns (with curved sliding crooks called ‘inventions’ inserted into the body of the instruments rather than the mouthpiece) and natural trumpets – are substantially important here. And don’t you know it from the first bar of the First Symphony, as silvery trumpets in D ride over the orchestra in David Zinman’s dynamic Adagio introduction. But the horns, mostly reinforcing the trumpets in the three movements they appear together, are subdued. So are the timpani in both works, undermining dramatic emphasis. Still, there is no gainsaying the momentum generated in the main Allegro vivace, played two-in-a-bar as specified with exposition repeated. Nor can one quibble about the tempi for the remaining movements, the rather quick Andante mitigated by contoured lines.

It may not be stylistically apposite for a 19th-century piece but a double-dotted Largo nevertheless adds extra force to the opening of the Second Symphony, preceding another swift first movement, exposition repeated, as it is in the finale too. And as a total performance, horns better balanced as well, there’s nothing to question, instead appreciating the woodwind decorating their parts in the slow movement, and revelling in the Zurich Tonhalle’s expertise. But here’s the rub: they play like a conductorless band because Zinman is dispassionate, reluctant to fathom the emotional horizons of each work. Not so Frans Brüggen and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. They look beyond the printed page, empower their musicians to confront the subjective, and gift all listeners with illuminating interpretations.