I guess I'm remembering wrong, but I thought that his Mahler 3 came out before the 2nd. I remember that the Tennstedt, Maazel, Slatkin, and the one with the RPO on Vox Box (conducted by the guy who used to conduct the Oakland Symphony), all roughly came out around the same time. Anyway, at that time, we used to compare that group. A few years later came the Rattle, Ozawa, Gilbert Kaplan, and Bernstein (DG). Wow, none of those would be first choices for me these days. Yet, I could probably easily live with most any of them.