Schumann himself conducted the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne, and the CD booklet makes a case for the ensemble’s continuing connection with his music via conductors from Ferdinand Hiller in the mid-19th century down to the city’s current General Music Director, François-Xavier Roth. Indeed, Roth made Schumann the focus of the orchestra’s 2018-19 season, two performances from which form his recorded debut not only in the composer’s music but also with the Myrios label.

He’s far from the first to do so, but Roth makes the once-heretical case, through judicious observance of the score and an acute ear for sonority, that Schumann knew what he was doing. Timpani in the Spring’s slow introduction roll like distant thunder, a bass trombone eructates imperiously, while pinpoint string articulation grants the music the clarity it requires and (still) so seldom receives. Considering these recordings are taken from live performances, the precision is noteworthy. Schumann didn’t make it easy either for his players or for his conductors.

The Fourth Symphony is presented in its groundbreaking, sinewy 1841 version, rather than the more common, beefier, bulkier beast it was to become following its revision a decade later. It’s become a popular alternative, and makes sense when coupled as here with the First Symphony from earlier in the same year; perhaps Roth and his Rhinelanders intend to offer the later version on a subsequent disc. Nevertheless, the slimmer scoring of this preliminary version enables a performance of notable athleticism in the outer movements. Others – John Eliot Gardiner’s ORR, for example, albeit on period instruments (Archiv, 6/98) – distil a greater fury in the faster music but Roth takes a different, more collegial view. All of which makes this is one of the most sheerly enjoyable Schumann symphony discs to have arrived in a while, finely played, gloriously recorded.