The most recent instalment in Markus Stenz’s Mahler cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne is an improvement over their earlier Second Symphony (A/11), though some key problems of that release – particularly the uneven recording quality in the voices – have not been banished.

As with their Second, this performance starts out particularly well. Stenz is good at grabbing the listener’s ear with the dramatic gesture. So too does he move from the broad expressions of the opening to the more subtle moments, by turns folk-like and ethereal, in the movements to come. More crucially, though – and much more successfully than in the Second – Stenz keeps a firm grasp of those transition moments in Mahler that separate mere traffic cops on the podium from those conductors fully able to link shifting personnel indicated in the score with the music’s underlying emotional content.

At 94 minutes, this is a brisk Third that rarely feels rushed, due to both Stenz’s control and the production team’s sonic fidelity to the Cologne Philharmonie, where the performance was recorded. Where it stumbles, albeit briefly, is in the voices. While alto soloist Michaela Schuster clearly maintains her own realm, the text comprehensible on this recording in a way few singers could manage in live performance, the combined forces of the women’s chorus of Cologne Opera with the women’s and children’s choir of Cologne Cathedral never hold their own amid the orchestral texture. Compared to the earlier recording, though, this complaint is now downgraded to a quibble.