A recap may be in order. In Edward Seckerson’s criticism of the ‘forensic exposition’ of the Sixth (8/14), David Gutman’s praise of the ‘thoughtful intelligence’ of the Fifth (1/10), ‘kept fashionably on the move’, and my reserved appreciation of sideways looks at the Fourth (A/10) and Seventh (9/13) symphonies, readers may discern a common thread of text-centred objectivity which marks Stenz as a modern Mahler interpreter. The last volume of the cycle follows suit.

The Ninth’s first movement proceeds with an unremitting pulse, the comodo of its Andante observed more in the letter than the spirit, and that graveyard for the finest string sections, the bridge to the climax of the development (around 12') surges with vigour; more problematically, the subsequent funeral march is extrovertly done, forwardly presented in the mix, and the subsequent recapitulation doesn’t bring the longed-for mingled relief and regret. Instead we’re still deep in the expressionist territory of Schoenberg’s imagined forests in Verklärte Nacht and Erwartung. The avian dialogue revisiting the moment of deathly hush before the Resurrection of the Second Symphony passes for little. As in the finale, Stenz saves a relaxation of tempo for the final page – a case of too much, too late.

Rather as with Chailly’s return to this music in Leipzig, so much more swift and lean than his Concertgebouw years, we’re made fruitfully aware of the Haydn in Mahler, the simultaneous inhabiting and questioning of symphonic tropes and dance metres. None of the three tempi in the second movement is properly slow, so it’s hard to feel the contrast between themes, the rough stamp of the second and the senile charm of the third. Chailly is quicker still but Stenz lacks both wind soloists with the individual personality of the Gewandhaus members and the determination to do something with them. At every turn of the inner movements, Chailly’s live recording is more sharply etched, more alive to danger, more virtuosically Janus-faced.

A highlight of the cycle has been the analytical booklet essays, which discuss the symphonies and their carefully worked but uneasy place within the grand tradition without recourse to biographical equivalence. Hartmut Lück justifies Stenz’s presentation of the Adagio torso of the Tenth with reference to the ‘ultimately unanswerable question’ of what a Tenth completed by Mahler would sound like given its present, ‘uncrossable fragmentary character’. Many Anglophone readers will feel differently.