Regular Gramophone readers may remember the late Michael Oliver complaining of an ‘insane over-production’ of recordings of Shostakovich’s Fifth. What might he have said about the current crop of Mahler Thirds, with Gielen, Abbado, Tilson Thomas, Boulez and now Bychkov attempting to muscle in on a saturated market? In fact Bychkov’s Mahler is not unlike that of Tilson Thomas: spacious, nuance-friendly yet relatively low key, an impression reinforced by the clean tonal palette of his orchestra and the translucent acoustics of the recording venue. Bychkov doesn’t punch home rhythms in the manner of a Bernstein or signpost bar lines à la Solti (some would no doubt prefer a more secure pulse in the long, slow introduction). What he is good at is clarifying, and gently sweetening, textures. He’ll accommodate a little local colour – the squeal of high woodwind and a smidgen of old-world vibrato from the horns – but he never aspires to the epic, proletariat-on-the-march tone of some interpreters. Nor will you find much agonised journeying of the spirit.

It’s a pity that the oboe solo at the start of the second movement is more studied than expressive, scarcely pianissimo. Elsewhere, the music-making has an attractively Grazioso feel, just where Boulez, for one, tends to lose interest. The soloist in the fourth and fifth movements is the Slovene veteran Marjana Lipov?ek. She’s mature-sounding these days but lends authority to Bychkov’s rather soft-grained take on the Nietzsche setting ‘O Mensch!’.

Sir Simon Rattle’s famously rigorous interpretation of its Hinaufziehen (‘Pull up’) markings has obviously influenced Bychkov’s treatment of the bird cries on oboe and cor anglais: the case for these intrusive upward glissandi is unproven at best. The rapt opening of the finale conveys a poignancy and intensity one expects to hear only from the most accomplished conductors and orchestras. Even so, the lack of a truly compelling sense of purpose is betrayed by the micro-management of the swells indicated in the cello line, and isn’t the tempo dangerously slow? It’s not immediately obvious that Bychkov has wrestled with the ideas behind the notes, for all the lovingly wrought detail. The blind ambition and sheer megalomania of the piece seem to pass him by.

The conductor’s remarkable openness to different styles and idioms is showcased in the coupling, York Höller’s work for chorus and orchestra with sampled and modified harp sounds. While Höller, 60 next year and Cologne-based for much of his career, may not be exactly cutting edge, his post-Darmstadt idiom is still radical enough to have limited his exposure in the UK, although his Piano Concerto was premièred here in the mid-1980s.

He remains committed to making electronics an integral element of traditional concert music and his incorporation of identifiable quotation is inherited from his teacher Bernd Alois Zimmermann. It’s Mahler’s Seventh rather than the Third that is alluded to here in the nightmarish prelude to the last, Pablo Neruda-inspired section. Conceptually and compositionally complex without making extreme demands on the listener, Der ewige Tag associates the course of ‘the eternal day’ with the wider passage of time through a procession of historical epochs and cultures. Working in this, very different musical language, dark and brooding though often surprisingly smooth rather than disruptively gestural, Bychkov and his team again achieve remarkable transparency.