Album: Beethoven, Symphonies 4 & 6 – BF0 / Fischer (Channel Classics)

The strings are plumper than we've come to expect from recent Beethoven cycles but the Budapest Festival Orchestra can still deliver at the composer's original metronome markings.

Conductor Iván Fischer only invokes fevered revolution at certain moments and elsewhere concentrates on well-argued phrases and a general sense of wonderment. Is wonderment enough? Woodwind and brass detailing is excellent throughout, while the sublime close leaves you itching to hear Fischer's Seventh.