Over a dozen new recordings, not to mention an entirely new performing edition, of Bruckner’s youthfully vibrant and at times painfully beautiful Second Symphony have appeared since this Giulini recording was made by EMI in Vienna in 1974. Yet, as Arnold Whittall wrote in these columns on the occasion of the performance’s first CD reissue (Testament, 12/01), ‘matters musicological fade to vanishing point given such communicative genius’. It was a view which echoed Deryck Cooke’s opinion in December 1975: ‘For once I’m inclined to ignore the question of versions – it’s still Bruckner’s Second Symphony, and sounding more maturely Bruckner than ever before’.

This is, indeed, one of the great Bruckner performances on record. Produced by Christopher Bishop and engineered by Christopher Parker, the original EMI recording was exemplary for its time. I had wondered whether this latest release was of a live performance from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra’s own archive. But, no, it is simply a reprint of the 1975 recording which, like the Testament, has been taken from EMI’s original tapes. Paul Baily’s 2001 transfer for Testament strikes me as having rather greater ‘presence’ than this newer German remastering. However, there is little that a small adjustment to the volume control won’t put right. The booklet includes an interesting essay on Giulini by Robert Freund, a horn player in the orchestra between 1967 and 1982.