Notwithstanding the impact of Danish orchestral visits to the UK in the 1950s and of Robert Simpson’s classic book Carl Nielsen: Symphonist, it was Bernstein in the early 1960s who more than anyone secured the international breakthrough of Nielsen’s music, and nowhere more so than in his still classic 1962 recording of the Fifth Symphony with his own New York PO. The Espansiva was made with the Royal Danish Orchestra (after an invited performance that blew the Danish critics away). Now, as principal conductor of the NYPO, Alan Gilbert has chosen two Nielsen symphonies, to one of which Bernstein singularly failed to do justice (No 2).

Listen to the first couple of minutes of each movement and you would probably rank these as among the most thrilling of modern accounts. In fact the entire first movement of the Espansiva is a conspicuous success and the two vocal soloists in the slow movement are golden-toned (the baritone’s lines being even more impeccably sustained than the soprano’s). It is not until the third movement (lacking bite in the strings) that serious questions arise, and the lurch forward at 9'10" in the finale rather confirms that Gilbert doesn’t always sense the broader flow. In the Second Symphony, he hits on the ideal headlong tempo for the ‘Choleric’ temperament, and the ‘Phlegmatic’ is as idiomatically carefree as the ‘Sanguine’ is care-less. However, the ‘Melancholic’ slow movement is distinctly lacking in flow, and this is symptomatic of a more general problem.

There is absolutely no doubting Gilbert’s affection for the music. But while it would be an exaggeration to say that he kills the thing he loves, he does occasionally spoil it with sugary treats. He takes almost every espressivo and tranquillo as an invitation to luxuriate (Bernstein himself was equally at fault when it came to the Inextinguishable) and the result is a near-fatal loss of momentum in many of the lyrical passages.

The recording itself is also less than ideal. A few podium clunks are a price I don’t mind paying for the immediacy of live recording. What bothers me much more is that the brass loom over-large and the timpani tend to thud, so that the strings are all too often overpowered (woodwind solos are gorgeous, however). Whether this is a matter of Gilbert not quite balancing things aright or of the engineers not quite having the measure of the Avery Fisher, I can’t be sure. All in all, it makes for an overall impression rather less than the sum of some admirable parts and prevents a recommendation alongside the classic accounts of Blomstedt (San Francisco).