With a relationship with Mahler stretching back to the 1890s, the Berlin Philharmonic’s new symphony cycle, caught live on 10 CDs and four Blu ray videos, affords a thumbnail sketch of the orchestra’s shifting thoughts on his music over the past decade as filtered through the batons of eight conductors.

Mahler himself conducted the BPO on several occasions, including the 1895 premiere of his Second Symphony. Here, from 2018, the Resurrection is led by a somewhat overawed Andris Nelsons reluctant to unleash the immense power within. Taking a long, lean run up to the epiphanic finale, his clarity of texture and definition of line are plusses too lightly exploited. Despite strong choral singing and superb contributions from Lucy Crowe and Gerhild Romberger, the lingering sense of Nelson’s semi-detachment makes for an anti-climactic experience.

The earliest recording is Claudio Abbado’s aching account of the Tenth’s Adagio (in Deryck Cooke’s completion) from 2011, near the end of his tenure as chief conductor. Bittersweet and baleful, it carries itself with a broken grandeur that serves as a masterly demonstration of Mahler at his most contrarily immediate and indecipherable.

From the same year is the first of...