MAHLER: Symphony No. 5. The Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi. London 425 438-2(compact disc).

Dohnanyi leads a straight-on performance of what augurs to be Mahler’s most recorded symphony. The Clevelanders render it with that lean, mean technical mastery that probably makes them unique among American orchestras. But Dohnanyi’s structurally coherent reading imprint itself on the memory only in the central Scherzo and the buoyant contrapuntalism of the Rondo-Finale. The opening Funeral March misses weight, the second movement seems to skate over submerged meanings, and, while heart-on-sleeve Adagiettos can be disfiguring to the work as a whole, the dry-eyed approach espoused here is not much better.