It may well be that more of the score is audible here than ever before. What’s lacking is less easily defined. Vänskä is not the first conductor to prize textual clarity over the lazier approach of Mitteleuropa. If his first movement is often surprisingly stately, disinclined to let rip lest some dot or comma be less than faithfully conveyed, the second is so crisply enunciated that the music loses its smile. That this is a deliberate tactic in the Scherzo material is confirmed by the subtle characterisation of the central Trio, the nostalgia palpable in sliding strings and finely etched winds. The return strikes me as implausibly brusque but you may hear things differently: such playing is mightily impressive in its own way.

The quirkiness continues when the ambivalent funeral march is launched by a sectional rather than individual solo for the double basses. The suggestion in Jeremy Barham’s booklet note that this controversy ‘seems to have been settled’ will surely not go uncontested by Gramophone readers. What follows feels conscientious rather than natural, the calculation a little obvious. (Or was I being influenced by the excessive smoothness at the start?) The finale banishes doubts for a time, thanks to the devastating ferocity with which the players tear into its opening section. Lyrical elements, pristinely beautiful, are short on heartbreak. Throughout the sense of direction is sure, the sense of theatre ultimately less so. The Minnesota Orchestra play out of their skin but you may be disturbed by the tendency to take a surgical scalpel to the body of sound.

Working with a forest of mikes, Robert Suff’s production team once again elicit surround sound of remarkable clarity without betraying the spacious acoustic of Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis. The dynamic range is vast. And for investors in physical format, BIS’s packaging is now irreproachably green. That said, even recent competition is intense: François-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi, 6/19) posits a five-movement Titan incorporating the discarded ‘Blumine’, while Adám Fischer (AVI-Music, 4/18) seeks to impress with a wealth of affectionate detail in the conventional edition. Vänskä, disinclined to over-egg the pudding, eschews the additional timpani stroke with which many recordings embellish the finale’s parting shot. What’s missing en route is a certain geniality.