Mahler’s epically-scaled, even more epically themed Third Symphony can be a tough nut to crack. The longest symphony to have made it into the commonly recognised canon, it comes in at around an hour-and-three-quarters and its first movement alone often nudges 40 minutes. That opener, with its theme of ‘Pan awakes. Summer comes marching in’, is intended to balance the other five movements, a series of meditations on nature, mankind and the divine. When the third movement (‘What the creatures of the forest tell me’) and the finale (‘What love tells me’) weigh in at 18 and 25 minutes respectively, achieving that balance, let alone maintaining a through line, is just one of the myriad challenges for a conductor – that and guiding Mahler’s massive orchestra where pretty much everything is doubled, including the timpani!

David Robertson’s approach with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was exemplary. Understanding that Mahler has placed an ample sufficiency of extremes on the page, Robertson set off at a weighty, measured pace, while never resorting to the kind of added exaggerations that can bloat a reading of what is already a full-cream work. Like his friend and colleague the late Pierre Boulez, Robertson also paid homage...