We have a David and Goliath situation here: the superstar well and truly thrashed by the underdog – albeit one whose star is very much in the ascendancy. You have only to compare Gergiev and Nott in the Scherzo – and in particular the lazy, rustic waltz of the Trio – to hear just how much more organic is Nott’s sense of the music’s pulse and character. Everything about the Gergiev performance suggests that it’s been dressed up to sound like Mahler but with little or no sense of who Mahler really is. There is no joy, no pleasure in it.

From Gergiev’s oddly prosaic account of the pre-dawn stirrings (no mystery, no magic) to the empty bluster of his finale, this is a cold, loveless, loud performance. The LSO flex their collective muscle all right but rarely warm to the music’s enticements. Nott’s Bamberg Symphony are altogether more engaging and stylistically convincing. Where Gergiev’s Wayfarer is urbane and driven, Nott and his players immediately convey that glad-to-be-alive feeling, tempo and phrasing and that woozy counterpoint from the bass clarinet all suggesting an easy spontaneity.

Nott’s Scherzo, as I’ve already implied, is one of the best on disc. The tempo is perfect and there’s a woody, rosiny quality to the sound. Gergiev, adopting a slower gait, sounds merely ponderous, the Trio flat and charmless with rubato and portamento dutifully applied but not remotely enticing. Nott and his Bambergers draw you in: from the moment that solo horn sinks into repose you are properly transported.

Now we come to the vexed question of why Gergiev elects to deploy the entire LSO bass section for the “Bruder Martin” (or “Frère Jacques”) solo in the third movement. I am told that new thinking on this has resulted in a dubious change to the critical edition (can that really be the case?) but I cannot imagine why. How else but with a solo instrument can you achieve that wasted, cadaverous sound that Mahler so spookily imagined? As it is, Mahler failed to anticipate how well (too well) this rather pained solo would come to be played. Nott’s Bamberg bassist is indeed rather too beautiful (and perfectly tuned) but at least he’s solo. And the klezmer band serenading at the heart of this movement is deliciously cheesy, intensifying the contrast with the reflective passage in muted strings where Nott properly conveys that inimitable Mahlerian gemütlich.

So, no contest. Nott’s finale has fire and purpose, the second theme shaped with honesty and heart. Again it may not achieve perfect unanimity at the climax but, unlike Gergiev, it means something beyond an all-purpose emotional hectoring. The wistfulness of Nott’s return to the symphony’s opening material – a remembrance of things past – shows his sensitivity and reminds us how touching this piece can be. All right, so we could have done with a little more heft from the Bamberg horns and trumpets at the close but this is still one of the best recorded accounts we’ve had since Kubelík and Bernstein (his momentous Concertgebouw account), neither of which I could be without. Nott, you feel, has got under Mahler’s skin; Gergiev is merely offering an impersonation – and a not very good one at that.