With its huge orchestral complement, eight vocal soloists, and massed choral forces spilling over the stage, Mahler’s mighty Eighth Symphony is trotted out only when a grand statement must be made.

In the Seventh Symphony, Mahler was pursuing strategies of discontinuity – harmonically, polyphonically and schematically – notably in the last movement. So with this mastery of turning on a dime ...

The Eighth is often the Mahler symphony that seems to inspire conductors who fall short in the others. That’s a sweeping generalisation, of course, but look no further than a conductor like Solti ...