Jaap Van Zweden took up conducting in 1995 at the age of 35. A gifted Juilliard-trained violinist, he had spent the previous 16 years as leader of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, its youngest ever appointee. I knew nothing of his work until last year when an exceptionally fine Bruckner Fourth appeared (Octavia, A/07), a carefully prepared studio recording made with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic of which he is principal conductor.

That, alas, is a far cry from this crude and uncomprehending Mahler Fifth recorded live at the Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic last January. The LPO are an experienced Mahler ensemble whose no-holds-barred way with the composer’s music was developed under Tennstedt in the 1980s. Whatever view you took of this, Tennstedt was a fully functioning conductor with a detailed and highly developed knowledge of the music. Van Zweden, by contrast, appears to be busking his way through this notoriously demanding score, finessing textual cruxes and skating round difficulties while at the same time shamelessly whipping up the big moments in a crudely theatrical manner. This is Barnum & Bailey conducting, a world away from Van Zweden’s more sensitively rendered Bruckner. The exception is the Adagietto where the former concertmaster pulls out all the stops to draw from the London Philharmonic strings a highly cultured reading, albeit a distractingly mannered one.