It adds something to journey through this amazing cycle of symphonies in sequence and in relatively quick succession. The recent Oramo survey on BIS – though I heard it over a much longer period of time – is still very much in my mind and, given John Storgårds’s markedly different approach, I thought it would be useful to start with a couple of general observations. Oramo’s great strength is his dynamism, his ability to convey the imperative of Nielsen’s symphonic writing. Storgårds seems always to want to allow the music to breathe. His readings remind me of the early Ole Schmidt cycle though with far more incisiveness and finish. Still, there are occasions here when one just wants him to urge the tempo up just a notch or two, to edge the accelerator and burn just a little more rubber.

What isn’t in doubt is my preference for the Chandos sound, which, though spacious and far-reaching, feels more immediate and subsequently better clarified in the rowdiest tuttis. And there are a good few of those. The dynamic range is extraordinary, too, and while I would not want to denigrate the quality of the BIS product, I seem to be hearing more of what I want to hear with this new release.

So the ‘espansiva’ manner of Storgårds’s approach begins long before the Third Symphony and starts as it means to go on with the First. It isn’t slow but it is solid, even a little deliberate – bracing in a big-boned way. The slow movement is very beautiful, highlighting at once the superior quality of the BBC Philharmonic’s playing, and there is a steadier, more organic sense of evolution about it. The opening of The Four Temperaments would be even more irresistible if the sweep of it were matched by a tad more impulsiveness in the outer movements. Still, it is exciting, with trombones weighing in impressively in the first-movement development and all due relish for Nielsen’s snappy syncopations in the coda. The slow movement sounds almost Brucknerian – elementally expansive – and I love the way Storgårds leans into the dense harmony at the climax.

The dramatic ‘revving up’ at the start of the Espansiva does not for me generate quite the requisite uplift; and as the music grows in momentum, hurtling towards Nielsen’s gigantic carousel of a climax, Storgårds fails to capitalise on the euphoric release with its tumbling, descanting horns. It’s partly tempo, it’s partly spirit, but there is a joyous vulgarity – more Schwung – about a performance like Bernstein’s with the Royal Danish in this music. Storgårds is just too staid and when he does offer a slightly rebellious gesture – the rhetorical ritardando on the trombones in the first-movement coda – it kind of puts the brakes on the music.

The star turns are undoubtedly the Fourth and Fifth symphonies. The seismic energy of The Inextinguishable is brilliantly conveyed in really taut playing from the BBC Philharmonic. Particularly effective is the dramatic attacca from the benign Baroque-like ambling of the second movement into the searing string-led slow movement. That scarifying fugue into the final is scorching, too, though again I can’t help feeling that upping the tempo a fraction into the finale would have given the explosive duelling timpani more to build on.

I do like the way Storgårds illuminates the startling new sound world of the last two symphonies – the stark use of percussion and celesta, over-ripe bassoons and rampant clarinet. The bizarre oscillations at the start of the Fifth are full of disquiet, while the opposing elements of the piece – the renegade side drum and big ‘blue beyond’ theme (which always strikes me as so American) – are held in high relief. The anarchic climax of the first movement is astonishingly well engineered and the breakthrough moment of the ‘blue beyond’ theme is as thrilling as I’ve heard it – yet still topped by the desolate ppp clarinet solo’s fade to black.

It’s those eerily hushed moments that really register with Storgårds. There’s a wonderful example in the grotesque ‘nursery’ of the Sixth’s first movement, which comes on like an unsettling bedtime story. For me this piece has always resonated with Yeats’s words ‘the ceremony of innocence is drowned’ and in that Storgårds probably takes a darker view than Oramo.

Ideally, of course, one would like a combination of Storgårds and Oramo, not to mention Blomstedt and others besides. Oramo scores for energy and impetus but Storgårds has Chandos for sound.