Roth’s is handsome work, resulting in trenchant strings with a superb bass line, perfectly focused in the storms of the first two movements ad the fugues of the finale. There’s a good sense of forward but unforced propulsion which makes the Funeral March’s successor – often a sticky point in this Symphony – a blazing success.

You might even find Roth’s light-textured neoclassicism more convincing than Bernstein’s traditional grandstanding as we reach the closing chorale…Throughout Roth secures string-playing that is super-articulate with no shortage of special effects, trumpets and horns kept on a tight rein in what sounds like a dryish studio.

This same Cologne orchestra, in 1904, gave the premiere of Mahler No 5. Whether or not it was that fact that inspired these fine players and their brilliant conductor to surpass themselves, their account of the symphony is exceptional: intensely vivid, abrasive, violent in its contrasting dynamics, sounding at times like a modern work.

an exciting and fresh-sounding performance, played on modern instruments but with a raw energy that Roth has brought from his work with his own period-instrument group, Les Siècles. Thanks to the transparency of sound they achieve we get to hear lots of usually hidden detail, and the players relish it.