One record guide recently placed Mariss Jansons’s Oslo Philharmonic recording of the Third at the top of the heap but sceptics should turn to this new version to hear how close an affinity he has with this difficult piece. What may appear to be refined restraint in the articulation of the first movement’s F‑A‑F pays off in a superbly calibrated account of the finale (restrained in different ways: a remarkably consistent minim=80, where Gardiner takes a more flexible, sometimes headlong minim=93) that faces into the storm head-on before eventually finding that F‑A‑F has been flowing like a deep-sea current all the while, though the playing at the start of the coda conveys a moving sense of the symphony brought to shore on the very frailest of barques. No applause breaks the spell.

The tenderly songful account of the Second betokens no less intimate a connection between Jansons and the players. Every beat is distinctly placed, which can make this symphony’s many offbeats unduly predictable, and the episodes of the second movement succeed one another as if laid before us in a Poussin panorama of the seasons. I like very much the kinks in the phrasing of the Allegretto but I wish he had pressed on (or not held back) at the start of the first movement’s development section. Again, though, Jansons has taken the long view. The finale has a huge, rustic energy, like a Jamaican sprinter who has peaked at the right time for the big race. These are big performances in every sense of the word.