It used to irk me when young pianists chose to include Beethoven’s last piano sonata in their debut recordings. It seemed premature, and the outcomes were rarely happy. It’s the same with Bruckner’s last symphony. Even more than Beethoven’s Op 111, it’s the record of a man approaching journey’s end; the kind of work you tackle at your peril if you haven’t spent long years on the road with him, entering his mindset, coping with his foibles and rejoicing in the achievements of a well-spent, albeit by now troubled, life.

This isn’t Jakub Hrůša's or his Bamberg orchestra’s first Bruckner recording, but it might as well be, such is the performance’s failure to engage with the symphony at a level much beyond that of a dutiful playthrough. There are moments that briefly hold one’s attention. The first part of the Scherzo lacks menace but the Trio is pleasingly realised in a way which suggests that the Bambergers might well be a class act where the music of Mendelssohn is concerned. There’s nobility, too, in the brass section’s enunciation of the 16-bar chorale, dubbed by Bruckner his ‘farewell to life’, near the start of the Adagio.

Elsewhere, the shortcomings are the familiar ones where less than adequate performances of the Ninth are concerned: in particular, an inability to weld into a series of single spans the first movement’s vast multifaceted 226-bar exposition, its equally vast counterstatement and minatory end. This problem of narrative continuity is even more acute in the Adagio, where a lack of clear dynamic nuancing leaves us with next to no sense as to why at times Bruckner appears to be at his wit’s end where tonality itself is concerned.

The recording might well be enjoyed by the good folk of Bamberg but it’s no match for any of the famous recorded Ninths with which collectors will be familiar – among them Claudio Abbado’s great valedictory performance (DG, 9/14), recorded live in Lucerne in 2013.