Horenstein Mahler

At last, a remastered release of the legendary Jascha Horenstein Mahler Symphony no 5, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra recorded at the Edinburgh Festival in 1961. It's available for digital download from Pristine Classical, the specialist supplier.

Conductor Jascha Horenstein has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of the music of Gustav Mahler. His 1952 studio recording of the Ninth Symphony was the first such recording to be commercially released (the 1938 Walter was partly or entirely live; a 1950 studio effort by Scherchen only appeared long after it was recorded). A small handful of other recordings, made between the mid-1950s and the late sixties and generally live, have appeared over the years, but never this particular rendition from the Vienna Festival of 1960 which, over three weeks, celebrated Mahler's centenary.

Simply put, this set is a treasure that is also a bargain. Two masterful performances by Barshai and the outstanding Junge Deutsche Philharmonie (a youth orchestra playing like a world class orchestra), both performances among the best available versions of each work. Mahler's unfinished score for his Tenth symphony has been ably projected and realized in performing editions of (most commonly) Deryck Cooke, Joe Wheeler, Clinton Carpenter, Remo Mazzetti, and others. Performances of the Tenth are now commonplace, and there are numerous recordings, many compelling.

Even though the revival of Carl Nielsen's music in the late '60s proved to be nearly as revelatory as the slightly earlier promotion of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, the pace of recordings at the time was quite sluggish. Indeed, by the early '70s, the discography of Nielsen's symphonies included a smattering of releases by Leonard Bernstein and Eugene Ormandy for Columbia, Jascha Horenstein on Nonesuch, and Ole Schmidt on Unicorn, along with these utterly superior recordings by Herbert Blomstedt and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra for EMI. The six symphonies were recorded between 1973 and 1975, and for their time were the best available recordings of Nielsen's music.

The six symphonies were recorded between 1973 and 1975, and for their time were the best available recordings of Nielsen's music. They constitute the bulk of this 2008 box set, and though two smaller sets of the symphonies and the concertos were issued by EMI in 2007, this seven-disc compendium provides much more music at a comparable cost.