Forget for the moment that opening pronouncement, eight horns greeted by snarling brass and low woodwinds (Chailly grips the line like a blacksmith at his anvil). Forget the first movement’s phased marching, gradually gaining momentum with each successive episode until a battery of drums is frog-marched offstage. I’d suggest sampling the scherzo first, just the initial couple of minutes, the woodwinds’ cuckoo calls, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, all airborne yet held securely in time. At around the five-minute mark fanfares herald a distant postillion (note the childlike simplicity of the flute at 7'16"), more beautifully balanced – and possibly more beautifully played – than on any rival recording.

Riccardo Chailly’s Mahler Third offers us a graphic narrative, a fantastical refuge, cosseted and balanced so even the standard CDs sound three-dimensional. The horn-crowned opening is very strong, the cellos and basses that rage in its wake less ferocious than on some rivals. But Chailly holds the movement’s contrasting light and dark episodes together well; the lead trombone (Ivan Meylemans) is magnificent, especially at 8'29", the symphony’s darkest moment.

The middle movements work extremely well, the Minuet full of affection, the Scherzo like an Arthur Rackham illustration come to life. Petra Lang’s first entry in ‘O Mensch! Gib Acht!’ must be among the most perfectly judged on disc, her tone veiled but full-bodied, while for the choral ‘Bimm bamm’ Chailly has his singers and players chime with admirable precision.

Ultimately, though, it’s the slow finale that holds the key to this memorable interpretation, with cleanly defined strings that don subtle portamenti (the cellos are especially vibrant) and the sort of expressive emphases that recall Mengelberg’s Mahler. Chailly’s Mahler might be warm but it is by no means comfortable. For example, how shocking in context the return of key material from the opening movement (at 16'35"), its effect almost as draining as the Sixth Symphony’s hammer blows. The closing two-tier peroration sounds a note of fulfilment, redemption forged from suffering, joy in eternity. The journey completed, there are no retrospective uncertainties– at least that’s how Chailly’s Third leaves us.

A fine production, then, but the finest? Various rivals still hold trump cards. I love the sculpted opulence of Haitink’s Concertgebouw recording, the clarity and intensity of Abbado’s live RFH performance and the unaffected naturalness of the Boulez VPO recording. Then there are Leonard Bernstein’s epic statements from New York, the earlier version still communicating a sense of awe at what is after all Mahler’s largest single structure.

Chailly holds his own, less granitic than Bernstein perhaps but better recorded. And he has an interesting fill-up in the Bach Suite ‘arr Mahler’, a concoction made up of movements from the Second and Third Suites, fleshed-out Bach that paradoxically reminded me more of Mengelberg than of Mahler. Mengelberg’s own Concertgebouw recording of the Second Suite ‘proper’ is far heavier than Chailly’s take on Bach-Mahler, but both bear witness to how Bach was heard at the far end of the 19th century. Interesting, but the symphony is a lot more than that, a front-runner in a field that nowadays is fuller than anyone years ago would have dared to imagine. We really don’t know how lucky we are!