Our July Recording of the Month is a gripping new account of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Recorded in SACD sound, it’s the latest instalment in Osmo Vänskä’s ongoing cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra.

Clive Paget caught up with the Finnish conductor to ask to what extent was Mahler aware of his own mortality, the relative endings of the Ninth and Tenth, how Mahler Nine compares with Sibelius’s Fourth, and how Mahler managed to write any music at all, given the challenges of guest conducting?

When we spoke about the Tenth Symphony (which won the 2021 Limelight Recording of the Year), I remember that as a conductor you were late coming to Mahler. When did you first tackle the Ninth Symphony?

I cannot give you any years, but I did it first in China, and then with the Minnesota Orchestra – I think we played it three times and then the recording. So, it’s really late in my life as a conductor, but I think a good impulse for me was to see Abbado’s concert in Lucerne – there is a YouTube recording.

When I saw it for the first time, it felt,...