Is this music which must always be felt at white heat? Can the conductor get by on the meticulous exposition of his text? In the context of Pierre Boulez’s Mahler series, this Third stands high and is in many ways an outstanding achievement, even if its merits may be more properly attributable to the strengths of the players and of DG’s sound team. Simply put, Boulez’s refusal to engage with Mahler’s ‘theatricality’ will not be to all tastes, though in music so excessive, this might be counted a virtue rather than a weakness.

The opening movement is unexpectedly slow, but it never drags, such is the conductor’s tight control. Is this mere inflexibility? I don’t think so. While there are fewer discontinuities than you might be used to, the impression is dark and even glowering, anything but superficial or merely neutral. And always there is the magnificent sonority of the Vienna Philharmonic – in a spacious acoustic that will open up still further for surround sound. The weakest passages, unsurprisingly, are those requiring a modicum of local charm, the strongest those in which the music perhaps needs saving from itself.

Anne Sofie von Otter is more pungent than sentimental in the potentially cloying fifth movement and the slow finale is kept moving naturally forward, never wearing its heart on its sleeve. On the other hand, the second and third movements may strike you as inappropriately flat. And, in the Nietzsche setting, while much is made of the hinaufziehen marking as revived by Sir Simon Rattle and Michael Gielen, Boulez seems less concerned to evoke the concrete image of bird song at night. He certainly can boast a strong soloist in von Otter.

How to sum up? These days there are many fine rival accounts, far too many to list, although the ground-breaking Bernstein and lithe, lyrical Abbado strike me as especially (albeit differently) idiomatic, not least in their use of rubato. Technically speaking, Boulez and his collaborators accomplish precisely what they set out to achieve and at the very least his set will be in demand for its considerable sonic virtues. There are also copious notes by Henry-Louis de la Grange. Mahlerians of a certain stamp will be delighted!