Claudio Abbado began his career with Mahler and has been conducting the composer for his entire professional life. The Ninth and, above all, the Seventh – you may have caught the superlative performance he gave of this work at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra – have consistently brought out the best in him. Back in the Philharmonie, the results are very nearly as fine. His serious illness, and the looming end of his Berlin tenure, would seem to have galvanised orchestra members who, according to some reports, had begun to yearn for more demonstrative leadership as early as the mid-1990s.

Abbado’s authority in No 7 is unquestionable. His 1984 studio recording remains one of the top three – less minutely responsive than the first, 1965 Bernstein (partly a matter of CBS’s close-up sound), mellower and more poetic than the 1993 Gielen. DG’s sound in Chicago was good, but I was hoping for more brilliance, less plush and a cleaner focus from Berlin, making this new contender a clear first choice. As ever, life is not so simple.

Abbado’s view of the first movement is little altered. With some tremendous horn playing and fabulously articulate strings, the music feels somewhat darker than before. The middle movements have lost none of their improbable delicacy and flair. In Nachtmusik I, the ear-stretching echo effect of the opening bars is again boosted by the determinedly antiphonal placement of the horns, and the mood remains fantastical, less strident than with Bernstein. The changes elsewhere seem marginal – such matters of detail as the restoration of some tremolos in the mandolin in Nachtmusik II, or more being made of the string glissandi in the central scherzo. Only the driving impulse of the finale, subjectively more insistent than previously, detracts just a little from the characterisation of individual episodes; the orchestra, for all its corporate strength, isn’t quite beyond reproach by the close.

It is on sonic grounds that the marginally more ebullient, less refined Chicago version would get my vote. DG, on the new release, gives us another concert relay in which you don’t feel you’ve been given a decent seat in what is, admittedly, a difficult house. There’s so much switching between microphones that it becomes difficult to get a proper ‘fix’ on players operating in a stable acoustic space. Those who listen on headphones are likely to be especially bothered by the intermittent loss of bass frequencies.

There are momentary contractions of the sound stage as early as 0'17", 0'41" and 1'04" into the first movement, so – if you can – try before you buy. Not that I’d want to put you off acquiring what is a notably deft and atmospheric account by possibly the greatest Mahler interpreter of his generation. If the conducting is inclined to underplay the drama of the moment, sufficient sense of urgency is sustained by the combination of well-judged tempos, careful nuancing and precisely weighted, ceaselessly changing textures.

Abbado’s previous recording of No 9, taped live in Vienna, is now only available in his boxed set of the complete symphonies (DG, 12/95). Much acclaimed as an interpretation, its airless sound wasn’t to all tastes. The newcomer is another multi-miked extravaganza with sonic shortcomings that are immediately apparent. The opening bars establish a wide open sound stage (complete with hiss) that implodes with the appearance of the harp. That harp is always on the loud side, trumpets are almost always too reticent, the bass feels synthetic and there are troublesome changes of perspective. None of which is enough to nullify the obvious sincerity and conviction of a performance that simply gets better and better as it proceeds. This really is live music-making (the last big first movement climax at 16'54" is not together), but the inner movements are beyond reproach, ideally paced and characterised and superbly realised. The finale is content to plumb the depths in its own way – as sensitive as any of its celebrated rivals if without the point-scoring you may be used to.

Where some interpreters feel bound to choose between structural imperatives and subjective emotions (whether of the glacial or volcanic variety), proffering either proto-Schoenbergian edginess or late Romantic excess, Abbado has the confidence to eschew both the heavily saturated textures of his predecessors and the chilly rigidity of some of his own ‘modernist’ peers. Instead, his unaffected warmth allows everything to come through naturally. There remains something self-effacing about his musical personality. And yet there is sunlight – and a certain tenderness – in this account of the Ninth that you won’t find anywhere else, a fluency and ease that is something to marvel at. For those put off even now by the composer’s supposed vulgarity, Abbado’s readings constitute a convincing demonstration of the music’s integrity. Long may he continue to champion these scores!

How to sum up? While I wouldn’t want to be without the listed alternatives, Abbado’s recordings are scarcely less fine. Only the sound per se is below par, something that must surely be a factor in the ongoing live versus studio debate. I should add that in both symphonies, audience noise is kept at bay until the very end, the applause separately tracked for easy elimination. The awed silence that greets the expiration of the Ninth may or may not be stage-managed: it didn’t seem fake to me.