Fischer contrasts gracious, chamber-textured dances with brilliant fanfares and toppling masses to absolute perfection. Throughout there’s a transparency to the recorded sound, even in the heftiest passages, which is beautifully underlined by natural, state-of-the-art recording.

I honestly can’t remember hearing a performance of this extraordinary symphony that was so plainly in love with its ethos, its originality, its sonority. Iván Fischer reads the ‘small print’ of the score with such thoroughness that he makes most other readings feel like generalisations by comparison. It’s one of those performances that makes one think of the piece differently, and that in itself is cause for celebration and reassessment.

His strikes me as a considered approach, in every sense of the word, but that’s not so suggest it’s without nuance or character...Hein Dekker and Jared Sacks’s judiciously balanced, ‘hear through’ recording is a great asset in this respect, Mahler’s smaller, easy-to-miss epiphanies beautifully caught. As for the playing, it’s beyond reproach, with ravishing harps and well-blended Wagnerian brass.

Fischer...is an eloquent champion, celebrating the work’s eclecticism – cow bells, courtly dances, folk song – in a blaze of aural invention. His players, as ever, are lithe, spirited, virtuosic.

In sorrow or joy, everything is richly textured, heralded from the start by a haunting tenor horn, the first of many gorgeously earthy wind colours from an orchestra and conductor who seem constitutionally unable to generate a boring sound. The Channel Classics recording contributes its own warmth and clarity, especially helpful in the Nachtmusik interludes, or the brief visitations by a mandolin, guitar, and gently rattling cowbells. Whatever the music’s mood, I found Fischer’s reading utterly compelling and a spring tonic.

There can be little doubt that, for many, it will be the top choice for a recording of this symphony.

Every phrase moulded with care, each emotional nuance embraced with affection.