There are two chief reasons for Dudamel’s success as an Ives conductor with the LA Phil. One is their joint command of complex detail, conveyed in textures that seem to illuminate every thread in the music’s crazy patchwork (craziest of all in the overwhelming Fourth). The other is boundless enthusiasm and affection for whatever Ives puts forth.

For all its strangeness and everything-including-the-kitchen-sink aesthetic, the key is to make the Ives Fourth feel as inspired as it actually is. Far and away that’s the essence of Dudamel’s groundbreaking reading. You are swept along at every moment, and what’s of a piece isn’t the music, which wanders from hymn-book nostalgia to visionary transcendence, but Dudamel’s obvious excitement. The thrilling nature of the score gets transmitted as never before on disc.

The evolution of American music is chronicled right here in this quartet of symphonies. And when heard – as I did here – in a single sitting, it’s as if Ives is transitioning from the Old World to the New before our very ears...Dudamel – who clearly knows where Ives is coming from – embraces this ‘new normal’ [in No. 3] with much affection...Their panache is decidedly not central European.

Ives’s four symphonies encompass a dizzying array of styles, and Dudamel and his LA players respond to their Protean challenges with easy aplomb: whilst there’s plenty of Hollywood gloss where required, the folk-inspired Americana episodes have a properly homespun, outdoorsy charm. And the organised chaos of the Fourth’s ‘Comedy’ is so well-balanced (in every respect) that you could take dictation from the recording were you so inclined.

These performances certainly demonstrate that he is a very fine Ives interpreter, unerringly charting the journey from the almost blameless late Romanticism of the First Symphony to the modernist complexity of the Fourth...It’s a glorious achievement.