We have an inbuilt expectation these days for precisioned, sonically impressive Mahler – and this Sixth is no exception. But a forensic exposition of the score is only a means to an end with this composer and great performances of his work tend to happen between the notes, where the reasons for them reside. For a personality as strong as Marcus Stenz (as evidenced by his other Mahler) this struck me as a strangely anonymous account of the piece. It’s true that Stenz is more objective in Mahler than some, more seduced by the letter of these scores than by their psychological projections – but the consequence of this approach is an emotional coolness that has no place in the pages of Mahler’s most soul-baring symphony.

The first-movement exposition is immaculate – good tempo, clean lines, flexibility and uplift with Alma’s theme (second subject), where Mahler’s singing clarinets come through nicely. But isn’t the effect rather streamlined, lacking trenchancy and a dogged insistence? And compare Bernstein in Alma’s theme – not just uplift there but euphoria. The central departure to remote regions is transparent and poetic – some gorgeously distilled playing – but there is a deeper sadness and melancholy to these pages that Stenz fails to unlock. Listen then to Bernstein or Tennstedt (his 1983 live Prom performance) in the moment where grisly string basses reintroduce the march – atmosphere, subtext, a blackness. And where Stenz lays bare the big dissonant appoggiatura in the coda, Tennstedt shreds our senses with it.

Stenz – in keeping with so many now (but significantly not Bernstein or Tennstedt) – goes for the soft option of the Andante movement second and again its beauties are coolly attended with, for example, a tell-tale upward glissando in violins rendered pure and perfect like an abstract brushstroke as opposed to an involuntary ‘catch’ in the voice.

The wonky trios of the Scherzo – arriving too late to serve as a shocking mirror-image of the first movement – are too well-groomed (a criticism we can level at too much Mahler these days). Tennstedt may exaggerate the awkwardness with his cheesy rubatos but it’s awkwardness with a grotesque purpose.

The nightmarish finale frankly lacks a sense of the apocalyptic in Stenz’s safe hands and though the notorious ‘hammer’ is spot-on sonically (a real crack of doom), the defiant climaxes which carry us to and from those fatalistic blows convey little of Mahler’s withering desperation. No one, but no one, does that like Klaus Tennstedt. There is, however, a nerve-racking moment of suspense before the final fortissimo which Stenz times to perfection, stretching it a little more than is comfortable. Would that there had been more of that kind of theatre.