This is such a bewildering mix of the prosaic, the indifferent and the inconsistent that it is hard to know what Gergiev’s view of this piece is. From bar 1 he eschews overstatement, robbing the opening of its seismic drama. The upheavals from cellos and basses sound oddly literal, notes on a page; the tension between them non-existent despite Mahler’s having painstakingly written said tension into the suspenseful tremolando which can and should hold us breathless. All the conductor needs to do is count out the full value of what is there on the page. Even the little accelerando through the ascending figure of the third phrase sounds perfunctory when it should portend a quickening of the senses. The sound, too, is rather dry and boxy in these opening pages, immediacy eradicating any sense of the space beyond. Generally I find it rather opaque, with too little hall perspective and a slightly claustrophobic feeling in the big tuttis.

Gergiev is highly selective about which of Mahler’s directives he chooses to follow. The arrival proper of the beautiful second subject is marked to steal in shyly (a favourite directive of Mahler) but Gergiev suggests little or no sense of hopefulness tentatively gleaming through the gloom. Equally the great drama of the development as it hurtles towards that terrifying sequence of battering discords goes for nothing as Gergiev (and he is by no means alone in this) irons out the shocking drop-out that should happen (and only Bernstein manages this) when irresistible momentum switches to molto pesante in a heartbeat. Molto pesante may not be a tempo marking but it necessitates a dramatic flooring of the brake pedal – a kind of emergency stop before the precipice.

And what of the beautiful final pages of this first movement, strings wreathed in rosy portamento? Gergiev seems so bent on avoiding sentimentality (good luck with that in Mahler) that he all but refuses to acknowledge its gorgeousness. Similarly the trio section of the third movement, where trumpets in close harmony ease into a kind of nostalgic reverie. Heaven forbid that Gergiev and his players should relax into the moment and give it room to luxuriate. Again, compare the likes of Bernstein or Chailly or Jurowski.

When I saw that the great Olga Borodina had been entrusted with the consoling maternal voice of the ‘Urlicht’ I fully anticipated that the magic would duly descend. But, sad to say, she is sorely tested through its hard-to-sustain phrases, words almost incidental, pitching at best dubious.

So much of this performance comes across as Mahler by numbers. It is sometimes said that the hugely pictorial fresco that is the finale is more about stage management than performance and those aspects – distant summonses of offstage brass and the band that rushes us to judgement – are well judged here. But I do wonder about a conductor who can fill the silence before his excellent brass chorale sounds the Dies irae and then rush his way through the momentous fanfares which follow, completely ignoring Mahler’s suspensory ‘commas’ which in themselves tell you how expansive he wants this passage to be. Why?

And so the chorus steals in – suitably heartstopping (if you get this wrong you really cannot be taken seriously), though Anne Schwanewilms doesn’t ‘separate’ heavenwards as seamlessly as one might wish – and Gergiev goes for exultancy on the threshold of redemption. Bernstein, it has to be said, over-eggs the grandeur (incredibly slow) in the ascendancy of the coda but Jurowski conversely conveys uplift as I’ve never heard it in this piece. His LPO recording is for me a total revelation in so many ways and one I would urge everyone to hear. Enough said about Gergiev.