The Limelight Recording of the Month for June features Semyon Bychkov’s Mahler cycle with the Czech Philharmonic. The First to Fifth Symphonies were issued individually over the last few years, but the new box set features the remaining four, all of them in outstanding performances.

Clive Paget caught up with the Soviet-born conductor to talk about each of them and why these symphonies still absorb him after a lifetime with Mahler’s music.

You’ve lived with Mahler for many, many years, since you were a very young conductor. Has this cycle taught you anything that perhaps you hadn’t known previously?

You know, it always happens, not only with Mahler, with any great repertoire. As you go through life, and you live with it, and it lives in you, there inevitably will be an evolution. No matter how many times [you conduct them], at the end of a performance it’s extremely rare that I say to myself, “Yes, that feels the best one I’ve done to date.” But when that happens, it’s an enormous joy to come back to it later and realise it is different and there are things you haven’t considered before. It’s a living experience. The music doesn’t...