Positives first. This is a fine-sounding Mahler Third – up there with Manfred Honeck’s Pittsburgh account in the sonic stakes (Exton, 11/11). And the playing of the Minnesota Orchestra, here completing their Mahler cycle, is, as we have come to expect, most accomplished. But – and it’s a big ‘but’ – my overall impression of the performance is one of ‘uniformity’, a feeling of sameness in terms of tempo, shaping and characterisation. Mahler’s pantheistic masterpiece must effectively be an evolution in real time with phrasing as varied and as free as to suggest music created in the playing of it.

In his favour, though, Vänskä is at least super-expansive with a first movement of epic reach and power and a keen ear for inner detail in what are undoubtedly some of Mahler’s most flabbergasting orchestrations. But if I might give but one example of what I mean by ‘uniformity’, take the very end of the movement at the moment where a jaw-dropping vista halts the jubilant marching bands for the second time. Mahler distinctly marks the final couple of pages Schnell as we come (hurtling) out of the mighty climax and the effect is designed to be delirious. Vänskä (and he’s not alone in this) ignores that dramatic change of tempo and keeps the ship steady as she goes. It greatly diminishes the thrill of those closing pages.

Elsewhere in this movement there is much to enjoy – not least a sense of the music creating its own space. The colours are dark and atavistic in the crepuscular opening paragraphs with grumbling bassoons and primitive trombone slides breaking the ice, so to speak. The lachrymose trombone solos sound suitably sage and the general tone is one of earthiness. One small textual point in the sequence known as ‘The Rabble’ (Charles Ives in embryo) leading to the recapitulation: as the offstage side drum recedes surely the returning horn call from the opening of the symphony should effectively silence it by cutting across it. Vänskä gives us a tidy pause which is not at all what I believe Mahler intended.

The flora and fauna of the second and third movements are well drawn though the former is a tad deliberate and lacking in charm and the frolicking wildlife of the third feels regimented. Again it’s this ‘one tempo’ impression that bothers me. The offstage posthorn solos, though (Manny Laureano, superb), are quite magically distanced, all nature stopping to listen.

Jennifer Johnston brings gorgeous tone and immaculate diction to Nietzsche’s ‘Midnight Song’ and though some attempt is made to approximate ‘slides’ for the oboe and cor anglais we are spared the distracting ugliness sometimes heard. I still believe had Mahler wanted portamento he’d have written it (as in the Ninth Symphony Rondo-Burleske) and that the marking ‘drawn upwards’ is an impression not a literal instruction.

But any Mahler Third stands or falls on the final movement where humankind enters the frame. Vänskä gives us a passionate intensity but one which feels expressed rather than truly felt. Too much heavy accenting, too much which feels overworked rather than illuminated from within. It’s hard to explain but once you’ve heard Bernstein in his very first Mahler recording with the New York Philharmonic (still a classic – Sony, 12/62) there is no coming back.