Bouquets first. The Hallé’s principal flute, Andrew Nicholson, makes an immaculate showing in Nielsen’s engagingly bitter-sweet Concerto and he’s backed to the hilt by his admirably spick-and-span colleagues under Mark Elder’s watchful lead. Theirs is a performance of strong character and palpable dedication, if ultimately a little lacking in smiling spontaneity and without quite the entrancing grace and sheer poetry of the Gallois/Chung account, not to mention dedicatee Holger Gilbert-Jespersen’s pioneering 1954 version with Thomas Jensen. It’s followed by a stylish first recording of the discarded ‘Entrance March’ from Nielsen’s extensive 1919 incidental music for Aladdin (the composer wisely replaced it with the far more memorable ‘Oriental Festive March’ instead).

As for the mighty Fifth Symphony, well, Elder’s reading has much in its favour. Patient tempi go hand in hand with an intelligent sense of proportion and extraordinary, albeit occasionally fussy, attention to detail (Nielsen’s daringly confrontational writing for flute, clarinet and percussion is, however, captured with tremendous clarity). At the same time, I’d have welcomed a greater sense of purpose and momentum: tensions dissipate as Elder gently applies the brakes for those two tranquillo markings at fig 16 (6'45") and two before 24 (9'59") in the opening Tempo giusto, while the towering second movement ‘stacks up’ to far more convincing effect in Bostock’s lively and personable RLPO account (where the orchestral playing is marginally less tidy but rather more communicative than here). Worth sampling, certainly, but there’s something just a touch calculated about the finished article; to my ears, Elder’s Nielsen 5 never truly catches fire. With the exception of the disappointingly low-key Schønwandt, you can, I think, do better with any of the comparative contenders listed above.