When Mahler told Sibelius that “a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything” he probably didn’t reckon that conductors would never be able to stop at recording just a handful of his symphonies: they had to embrace them all. With the release of Symphonies 6, 7, 8 and 9, Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic have now reached their own “natural culmination” of a project deeply rooted in Prague’s soil.

As the booklet note in the beautifully produced complete set, which brings the above recordings together with those of the previously released symphonies 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, reminds us, the relationship between this ensemble and Mahler is not merely professional but ancestral. Mahler himself conducted the premiere of his Seventh Symphony in Prague in 1908, and Bychkov’s cycle follows in the formidable footsteps of Václav Neumann’s 1980s survey.

Recorded in the marvellous acoustics of the Rudolfinum’s Dvořák Hall, the full cycle captures what the booklet describes as a “Mitteleuropean heritage” preserved in the orchestra’s “open-textured” strings and “vestigially vibrant” woodwinds.
Much has...