This is a fine account of Mahler’s Second Symphony from Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra, led by their newly appointed Principal Conductor, Kahchun Wong. Taken from a live performance in January 2025, it reveals an ensemble in fine fettle and a conductor with a clear understanding of the score’s complex structure and emotional depths.

You sense Wong’s hand at the tiller from the opening bars. The first movement is given an incisive, taut reading – the strings are beautifully lyrical, the brass clean and tapping into the ominous mood.  There’s a nice sense of propulsion throughout, but what is often a refreshing directness can be a little faceless on occasion. The players, whose warm, full-bodied sound can be deeply stirring, are perhaps too noble and burnished here to capture the deep neuroticism of Mahler’s music, its cosmic gravity.

This sense of poise continues in the following movements. In fact, the orchestra seems to be most at home in the dance rhythms of the second movement, imbuing this music with a fitting pastoral loveliness. While even the most distinguished accounts of Mahler’s work tend to schmaltz...