Is the Eighth such a problem piece as all that? Do its Latin and German, sacred and secular halves really coexist so uneasily? Is the symphony’s overwhelming optimism quite so distant and irrecoverable? You might reasonably ponder all these questions while listening to this new recording from Los Angeles – or for that matter dismiss them and proceed to enjoy a Mahler performance of the highest order, directed by someone who so evidently believes in the symphony and has the sufficient measure of it to inspire his performers, much as Tennstedt and Bernstein used to, without throttling them through an excess of either discipline or indulgence.

A properly thrusting main Allegro for ‘Veni Creator’ makes the best possible opening impression and sets the tone for a pacy but not unduly rushed reading, before relaxing marginally and smoothly into ‘Imple superna gratia’. The Spatial Audio sound (see the round-up feature on page 82) conveys both a distinct sense of the soloists singing into a hall, not a microphone – and (more unusually) the antiphonal writing between the two main choirs.

The solo violin arabesques, the hushed but splendidly clear choral singing and a nicely judged ritardando into ‘Accende lumen sensibus’ put the three most recent rivals on record (4/20) to shame: it’s all so musical in an understated way, unlikely as that may sound. Importantly, Dudamel has secured full cooperation for this classical approach to the symphony from a septet of evenly balanced soloists all able and prepared to sing quietly, sweetly, in tune, on time and as a team. The widescreen nature of the recording in Walt Disney Hall, however, also pans out to accommodate a fearsome voltage of vocal power when required (‘Dissolve vincula’). In fact the only slight loss of tension in Part 1 arrives with the final bars, which Dudamel pushes on a touch relentlessly.

A carefully integrated vision for the piece stages the slow introduction to Part 2 as a pastoral interlude with some luminous contributions from the LAPO winds, Mahler at his most Berliozian, before gradually pulling the symphony’s idiom both back and upwards, from opera stage to the pantheistic cathedral that closed Part 1 (halfway between the Missa solemnis and the Glagolitic Mass). Both singers and players phrase with just enough air around the notes and carefully placed accents to throw the listener forwards to the more obviously ironised Baroque cadences of Das Lied von der Erde, and this goes for the more impassioned tutti sections too. The flowing cantabile of Dudamel’s pulse helps so much with diction, light-touch phrasing and subtle differentiation of accents on the part of the chorus – but also with an appreciation on the listener’s part of the symphony’s autobiographical spirit of vigour and renewal. Among the Part 2 scenes and arias, Morris Robinson’s happy Klingsor of a Pater Profundus deserves special mention, as does Simon O’Neill’s honeyed conquest of Doctor Marianus.

The single obvious casualty of the live recording is ‘Zieht uns hinan’ from the two sopranos (the first pinched, the second fluffed) but otherwise momentum is gathered towards an apotheosis of properly engulfing intensity – and Dudamel still finds the time and attention to enjoy Mahler’s very Saint-Saëns scoring for rippling piano and organ in the build-up to ‘Alles vergängliche’, with another of those punctuating surges of energy (2'55" on the final track) that help to lift this recording above almost all of its modern-day rivals.

Download and streaming for now, but a CD version will follow in due course.