This is shaping up to be an extraordinary Mahler cycle with an extraordinary orchestra. Their possibilities are seemingly limitless – no ceiling – and all the wonderful detailing that Rattle has uncovered over the decades in exhaustive study of these scores now emerges with a freedom and spontaneity that feels truly organic.

This ‘black sheep’ of the Mahler cycle – a work which came as close as Mahler would ever come to conceiving and writing a purer and more abstractive, even impressionistic, kind of music – is very often the piece that conductors who fall short of the high emotional stakes elsewhere in the cycle can pull off with élan. Kirill Petrenko (Rattle’s successor in Berlin), in his much-lauded recording with the Bavarian State Orchestra (8/21), opened our ears to Mahler’s flabbergasting orchestral wizardry but while Rattle does so too – not least in a revelatory reading of the much-maligned finale – he does so in a way that still feels deeply personal. In short, I feel the performance has more ‘heart’ than Petrenko.

The curious aria of the tenor tuba which opens the piece is possessed of a decidedly ‘other’ kind of melancholy while the phrasing of the yearning second subject sounds and feels innate – subtle, pliant, instinctive shaping from the Bavarian strings. And when it is transformed in the ‘remote’ middle section of the movement the air it breathes is rarefied indeed. Super-expansive but never self-conscious, it’s as if it is briefly inhabiting another time-zone. Then again the recapitulation brings back the thrill of vaulting ambition all the way to the bells-and-whistles coda where one searing harmonic clash between the strings and brass borders on the psychedelic.

And that’s certainly the case with the extraordinary middle movements which are full of nuance and wonder and all manner of terrific wind-playing. The echoing exchange of horn solos in the nocturnal patrol of the second movement – one open, one stopped – is but one instance. This is music of the night for sure and it’s the play of light and shadow that Rattle and his players pull off so beautifully. And just when you are thinking that you have been ravished enough by the sonic beauties and crave a deeper tenderness Mahler will throw in something like the horn-led middle section of the second Nachtmusik, which can (and does here) break your heart.

The central Scherzo is the supreme example of things going bump in the night for Mahler. This veritable spook show throws up all manner of hallucinations – sforzandos that jump out at you, glissandos that slither, and the mother of all snap-pizzicatos. Rattle really gets the volatility of this music, and detail that he has come to know from the inside out now feels entirely second nature.

But it is the tricky finale of this piece that really lifts this performance to the next level. Just listen to the opening fanfare (timpani and trumpets) and the subsequent weight and bite of the strings in response. In an inadequate performance this finale can sound chaotic, disjointed and overly protracted. The Meistersinger connotations are unmistakable (a piece Mahler often conducted) in this apotheosis of the dance, a jamboree of ‘guilds’, if you like, jostling for our attention. But the challenge lies in making the transitions, the awkward juxtapositions, feel spontaneous and ‘in the moment’. There is an extraordinary logic to what Rattle and the Bavarians pull off here – a distinct method in the madness – but they do so without short-changing us on the wit and flamboyance of the movement.

The playing is virtuosic and then some but better yet it conveys more than most performances of the piece I have heard the sheer joy and gamesmanship of composition in a movement that seems to be all about Mahler letting his hair down. Where Petrenko was forensic about the mechanics of the music – brilliantly so – Rattle brings more ‘soul’ to it. We feel Mahler’s motivation. And then we come to that most thrilling of codas where the returning fanfare morphs into an amazing carillon, with the Bavarian trumpets going off like skyrockets and horns reaching for the heavens. It always takes the breath away but this time I was out of my seat. Doubtless the audience were too.

Enough said, then. I have rarely been more excited to hear what this cycle brings next. Rattle’s Mahler now feels lived-in and ever more insightful. Our attention and admiration have been earned.