Our June Recording of the Month features Semyon Bychkov’s entire Mahler cycle with the Czech Philharmonic. Limelight has previously enjoyed Nos. 1 to 5, released individually since 2022. Nos. 6 to 9, included here, complete the set and, frustratingly for physical CD collectors, are only available as part of the full box set (Pentatone PTC5187490).

“Recorded in the marvellous acoustics of the Rudolfinum Dvořák Hall in Prague, the cycle captures what the booklet describes as a ‘Mitteleuropean heritage’ preserved in the orchestra’s ‘open-textured’ strings and ‘vestigially vibrant’ woodwinds,” writes an admiring Will Yeoman. “From the opening march to the devastating hammer blows of the finale, Bychkov’s account of the Tragic Sixth Symphony is as tightly argued as Mahler’s conception of it. Fatalistic, yes, but with the orchestra successfully evoking the beating heart imprisoned within the classical architecture.”

Yeoman goes on to highlight the “elegance” of the Seventh Symphony where Bychkov’s phrasing, especially in the exquisitely rendered Nachtmusik movements, is “unfailingly gorgeous”. The centrepiece, he maintains, is undoubtedly the Eighth Symphony (the so-called Symphony of a Thousand), where the conductor manages his massive forces...