An enthusiastic podium presence, Payare gets results that are by no means ‘flash’. He takes nearly 47 minutes to negotiate a score which Carlos Kleiber and the composer himself get through in under 40. The argument flows nicely if not always with galvanic force.

Richard Strauss’s critics – baiting 1898 tone poem Ein Heldenleben, so exquisite one minute, so overwrought the next, receives a middling performance by the Montreal Orchestra under Payare. There is an epic sweep to their playing in Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung and the orchestra leader Andrew Wan is superb in the passages for solo violin. But their account lacks a certain effervesance, although the recording balance is spot on. The Bulgarian operatic soprano Yoncheva’s reading of Mahler’s Ruckert-Lieder is a similarly mixed bag – haunting in Um Mitternacht and Ich bin der Welt abhanden Gekommen, perhaps a little too light in tone elsewhere. Much to enjoy though.