Last summer Osmo Vänskä and the BBC Scottish took their performance of The Inextinguishable to the Proms, where they rose splendidly to the occasion. Their recording, made a few months earlier, is almost as thrilling. The outer movements have the impetus and unity of purpose that marks out the finest interpretations, while avoiding the awkward changes of gear and temptations to over-statement that mar so many. In Nielsen’s gentle second movement the woodwind make very plausible Danish country cousins, and only in the becalmed central section of the following poco adagio does Vänskä momentarily lose the symphonic thread. That may be a significant enough passage to disqualify him as an equal to Blomstedt, but it is a close-run thing.

The Espansiva is nothing like as successful, however. Here Vänskä drives the first movement along at a terrific lick, and rather at the expense of the swing that should never be too far from its surface. He makes the pastoral slow movement almost perfunctory, and though the last two movements go well enough, in general the performance feels less than fully run-in. One symptom of that is the orchestral balance. Generally pretty well spot-on in the later symphony, here it feels unnatural, with the individual sections shouting to make themselves heard, rather than listening and reacting to one another’s contributions. By comparison with the superb BIS recording of Chung and his Gothenburgers, this Espansiva sounds thin and abrasive.

Blomstedt’s mid-price ‘twofers’ remain the best choice for modern accounts of all six Nielsen symphonies, with Danacord’s three-disc historic Danish recordings from the 1950s providing a vital back-up for the specialist collector.