Given that the Tang Dynasty poets who inspired Mahler’s famous song-symphony were known for cutting loose, it’s not uncommon for tenors to show a bit of reckless exuberance. That said, Piotr Kusiewicz rather abuses the privilege, opening with a performance of ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’ that exudes far too much drunken abandon and nothing at all of the Earth’s sorrow.

Unfortunately, Kusiewicz is symptomatic of the recording as a whole. Under conductor Michael Zilm, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Katowice is so undisciplined in its ensemble playing, so lacking in overall musical focus, that we often seem to be listening to a rehearsal rather than a performance. Tempi are often idiosyncratic, with ‘Von der Jugend’ and ‘Von der Schönheit’ running between 15 seconds and a minute longer than most recordings in the catalogue – a detail notable mainly because the glacial pace loses both musical line and dramatic momentum. So too do the winds and brass often protrude sonically, as if sloppily grafted on to a background of strings with little symphonic context. This may be emphasised by the recording quality, which does the winds few timbral favours and emphasises stridency over warmth in the strings. But the frequent lack of musical coherence, with some lines ending abruptly and others pointing in vague directions, can hardly be blamed on an engineer.

Alto Jadwiga Rappé fares better, and once into ‘Der Abschied’, both song and symphony manage to settle together quite pleasantly. But by that time, we’re more than halfway through the disc.