“Authentic” or not, today’s Mahlerians have plenty of elbow-room. As Jeremy Barham points out in the accompanying booklet, notions of authenticity in Mahler are more than usually fraught when his acolytes conducted the Fourth in such radically different ways. We are also reminded that the man himself dared to improve on Beethoven’s scoring (odd then that no room has been found to print the text of Mahler’s finale.) Applying a historical performance perspective to the modern instruments of his Stuttgart ensemble, Sir Roger Norrington’s live recording was X-ray bright, whereas Herreweghe, taking his cue from the less weighty period sonorities of his Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, is softer-grained, with individual players placed in a fair-sized acoustic space.

At first I thought the endeavour might register as excessively low-key, Herreweghe’s podium persona being so undemonstrative, yet everything unfolds with seductive song-like grace. The potential for radical discontinuity in the opening bars is not seized and the bucolic woodwind make their points without strain, quieter moments gently sweetened, never thickened, by the use of gut strings. In spite of a momentary intonation problem from the leader and some (authentically?) unpredictable penetration from the brass, the playing is often ravishing, the slow movement more naturally inflected than by Sir Charles Mackerras (Signum, 1/11). The packaging accords band members an individual name check and they deserve it.

As for the finale, Herreweghe previously included “Das himmlische Leben” in his complete Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Harmonia Mundi, 11/06), wherein Alan Blyth found the usually wonderful Sarah Connolly less than ideally suited to the song’s childlike sentiment. The soloist this time is another noted Handelian whose more appropriate vocal instrument, vibrant and silvery, is brought a little close by the otherwise unimpeachable sound team.