I wasn’t all that enthused by the initial instalment in this series, a pairing of Brahms’s Fourth and Dvořák’s Ninth Symphonies (2/19). Despite lovely playing from the Bamberg orchestra, Jakub Hrůša’s interpretations came across as emotionally restricted. What a marvellous surprise, then, that this second volume satisfies in nearly every respect.

Curiously, Hrůša’s accounts of both Brahms’s Third and Fourth symphonies share a distinctly elegiac, restrained tone, yet in this new recording the restraint feels quintessentially – and quite touchingly – Brahmsian. There’s a suppleness and sense of warm intimacy that’s missing from his off-puttingly monumental reading of the Fourth. Hrůša is also more acutely attentive to the composer’s dynamic markings here – thus the opening chords are a proper forte (not a fortissimo, as one hears too often), and more crucially, pianos and pianissimos are hushed in a way that draws one in. Listen at 2'30" in the Andante, where the woodwinds really take the espressivo dolce instruction to heart, their hesitance suggesting a doleful regret, and then to the ardour the strings bring to the softly surging passage at 4'09".

Hrůša takes the third-movement Poco allegretto rather slowly, and his shaping of the primary melody – holding the crescendo back at the very apex of each phrase – underscores the music’s intense wistfulness. I’m impressed, too, by the way he navigates the finale’s volatile shifts of mood while simultaneously heightening its stark textural contrasts.

In Dvořák’s Eighth, Hrůša and the Bambergers offer a wealth of felicitous detail without sacrificing energy, momentum or the continuity of the long line. Indeed, the orchestra’s characterful, rhythmically vital playing is a consistent delight. How gaily the flute pipes over the viola’s songful tune at 5'26" in the first movement, for instance, or try the gentle passage at 8'03" in the exquisitely coloured Adagio, where the Bamberg violins play so sweetly one can almost hear them smiling. A few times in the finale I thought Hrůša a little too buttoned up – the dance at 1'52" could be more boisterous, and I was disappointed that the horns’ and trumpets’ frenzied triplet fanfare at the end gets buried. But these are very minor blemishes on an otherwise highly enjoyable pair of recordings.