After an uncertain start, Osmo Vänskä’s Mahler cycle has been winning wider acclaim. No doubt it’s the more forward-looking works that suit him best and the Adagio of the Tenth has rarely been played with greater textural clarity. Those familiar with the conductor’s propensity for exaggerated string pianissimos will have an inkling of what to expect. The dynamic range is vast. At the same time the interpretation struck me as restrained to the point of stateliness. This is Mahler without neurosis, disinclined to let rip until unavoidable, clear-sighted and dry-eyed.

The more gracious elements of the second movement are delightfully pointed but the crisp articulation of its first group feels too much like an end in itself. Ferocity has morphed into jerkiness by the close. This too doesn’t sound like Mahler – and of course it isn’t, even if Vänskä is among the growing cohort of conductors who accept Deryck Cooke’s performing version as part of the canon. The ‘Purgatorio’ is studded with self-consciously exquisite woodwind solos, the fourth movement cleverly held together despite its conflicted nature. The decidedly un-muffled bass drum strokes that separate it from the finale have a loud, hard, dry sound. Don’t be surprised that there are two of them. In Berlin Simon Rattle (EMI/Warner, 5/00) builds a bridge by cutting the initial repetition. Vänskä’s flute solo is efficient rather than especially rapt or otherworldly, the main body of the movement almost inconsequential, the returning nine-note dissonance unencumbered by extra percussion.

BIS’s bass-light recording is closer than some from this source, with violins antiphonally placed and hall resonance unobtrusive. The impression given of a conductor preoccupied with niceties of balance persists to the final fade. Absent is much sense of the composer’s imprecations to his wife, scrawled across the manuscript at a time of personal crisis: ‘für dich leben! für dich sterben!’ (‘To live for you! To die for you!’). Minnesotan music-making, so right for Sibelius, suggests more in the way of ice than warmth or desperation.