Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic’s traversal of Mahler’s symphonies reaches its half-way point with the longest of the cycle, the elusive, fractured portrait of nature that is the Third.

Immediately striking on first hearing is the sheer beauty and polished sheen of a performance that seduces with its sincerity and direct, apparently simple, expression. Subsequent listens begin to dissolve that surface gloss to reveal not so much a cohesively woven tapestry beneath, more a patchwork quilt of a symphony. Despite its six movements sounding as if none of them belong together, Bychkov’s always acute attention to telling detail – here inked in with delicate, artisanal deliberateness – alongside his painterly sensitivity to tonal colours and poetic sensibility in matters of temperament, adroitly stitches all together into something as intriguing as it is rewarding.

This second outing on disc is markedly more sophisticated than Bychkov’s first in 2001 with the WDFR Sinfonie-Orchester Köln on Avie. Shorter, too, by almost three minutes. A slender margin for so extended a work, but Bychkov knows that the Third has many more satisfying claims for attention than its headline-grabbing...