This is a thought-provoking, yet entirely natural, coupling: two masterpieces from either side of the First World War, dramatising the repressed brutality at the core of human nature, sharing some of the musical means for its expression (Nielsen never mentioned the affinities and they may even have been coincidental), yet encasing it in fundamentally different narratives.

Unfortunately, the performances, good though they are, by no means live up to that billing.

Järvi’s Rite is clean and unsensational, and finely played. Occasionally an unfamiliar line or timbre peaks through rather interestingly, but whether by design or accident of acoustic or individual playing is unclear. Otherwise this could be an identikit picture of 20 or 30 modern recorded performances, and it feels studio-bound in its calculated progress. At any rate there is none of the elemental, eruptive force of a Gergiev (admittedly, none of his self-conscious details either) and little of the compelling flow of the composer himself. Bear in mind, though, that reactions to Rite recordings are spectacularly divergent; for instance, Yoël Levi’s Atlanta recording, dismissed in these pages as ‘dapper’ and as conveying mere ‘ruthless, vociferous efficiency’, found itself nominated as top library choice on BBC Radio 3’s CD Review.

For the Nielsen, Järvi chooses the posthumous 1950 score – revised by Emil Telmányi and Erik Tuxen – over the 1926 first publication (now critically revised in the Complete Edition). But whatever benefits he might have derived from this slightly tarted-up source are nullified by his lack of feel for the large-scale dramatic rhythm of the piece. In the first movement, the clarinet completely misses the point of its solos, and the subsequent sidedrum-dominated battleground is thereby rendered pointless from the outset. The second movement lacks exuberance, and the drama of that exuberance being dissipated and regained is therefore again null and void.

No one has yet surpassed Bernstein for instinctive grasp in this symphony. But he is only currently available in a three-disc Nielsen set of variable quality. Blomstedt’s finely played account comes with library choice versions of The Inextinguishable and the Sinfonia semplice on two discs.

Telarc’s recording quality is outstandingly clear, but at the expense of atmosphere, and the gaps between movements are far too short.