Following their intensely refreshing, at times revelatory forays into Schubert, Schumann and Bruckner, Thomas Dausgaard and his exemplary Swedish CO now turn their sights to Tchaikovsky. The virtues are self-evident: Dausgaard elicits some impressively accomplished and consistently bright-eyed playing, textures are sifted with watchful care (the orchestral layout – with antiphonal first and second violin desks, and double basses rear left – is an enormous boon), and his readings are abundantly musical, eminently cogent, free of eccentricity and eschew any spurious expressive posturing (vibrato is most discreetly deployed), their innate good taste and sense of classical equilibrium never allowing the listener to forget for one moment Tchaikovsky’s veneration of Mozart.

If I’m not blown away, it’s simply that Andris Nelsons and the CBSO achieved much the same goals on their identically coupled Orfeo release, which also benefits from the irresistible frisson associated with a live event as well as a more gratifyingly rich (yet never cloying) body of string tone than Dausgaard’s group can inevitably muster. The Dane does, however, steer clear of the interpretative quirks that take just a little of the shine off Nelsons’s Romeo and Juliet, whereas in the Pathétique it’s the Latvian who generates the greater electricity, communicative urgency and emotional heat (without any loss in sure-footed composure or fastidious attention to detail). BIS’s engineering is wonderfully transparent, excitingly wide-ranging and wholly truthful.