“We don’t want to enter a ‘friendly competition’; that would be truly stupid,” says Pierre Boulez in the bonus documentary explaining the Mahler Project, his tag-team symphonic cycle with conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. That may be; but for those of us with limited funds or shelf space, this DVD is indeed in competition, not least with Claudio Abbado’s account with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which was released on DVD only a few weeks previously (Accentus, 6/11).

Barenboim and Mahler have not always seemed a natural fit but the relationship has obviously grown closer over the years. Barenboim’s description of balancing the initial shock of discovery with knowledge internalised from later study is not only palpable here in performance but places his approach in stark relief against Abbado’s. Where Abbado often pores over every note, Barenboim concerns himself with the phrase. Mahlerians with a stopwatch fetish will notice some dramatic differences in tempo, and yet Barenboim’s performance seems not only unrushed but precisely long enough. Abbado seems to wallow in impending death; Barenboim looks past the pathos and finds life. Shelf space notwithstanding, I’m not sure why we need to chose only one. The days are long gone since I thought Bernstein’s account was enough.

The camerawork here is strong, bringing the viewer into the most interesting sections of the orchestra at any given moment and doing so in a particularly musical fashion. For Barenboim and Boulez, the Mahler Project was as much about developing a relationship with a particular orchestra as it was with the composer; short of actually being with them in the concert hall, this is probably the best way to experience the results.