"The London Symphony Orchestra presented and played [Mahler's Symphony No. 3] under Mr. Jascha Horenstein, who clearly knows and loves it from the inside of the music outward, and who unfolded a deeply sympathetic conception with extraordinarily moving power.
Mr. Horenstein is a conductor, it seems, whose real quality is only discerned when the mood fires him: and it does not always yield fire. Mahler, on the evidence, strikes the spark for him more regularly than any other composer. This was certainly the most convincingly-felt reading that we have heard from him during his present visit, and his earlier work with the London Symphony Orchestra had established a responsiveness that realized the spirit as well as the letter of his, and Mahler's demands." - The Times, 1961
This week's release brings together three essential Mahler recordings from the baton of Jascha Horenstein: his 1954 Vox recordings with the baritone Norman Foster and the Bamberg Symphony of Kindertotenlieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen are coupled with a stunning live 1961 concert broadcast of the Third Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus and contralto Helen Watts. Excellent source material comes, as usual, from the incredibly rich archive of the conductor's cousin, Misha Horenstein, who has also written the sleevenotes for this release.