CD: Mahler: Symphony No 2; Mozart: Symphony No 29

Otto Klemperer's classic studio recording of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony with the Philharmonia was made in 1962, but there are at least four other versions of him conducting the same work, all of them taken from live performances. For those of us too young to have heard Klemperer in the flesh, a concert recording like this one, recorded by the BBC at the Festival Hall in London in December 1963, conveys at least something of the grandeur, spaciousness and granitic strength of a Klemperer interpretation.

It is hard to imagine now how much of a rarity Mahler symphonies still were in British concert halls in the early 1960s, yet this performance blazes with conviction and confidence; the orchestral playing and choral singing are generally magnificent, and Heather Harper and Janet Baker are superbly assured soloists. These days Mahler 2 often gets a whole concert to itself, but then it was prefaced by Mozart's A major Symphony in a typically stately Klemperer account; a real historic document.