Mahler: 2nd symphony (London Philharmonic)
*****

Longer than any performance on record except Otto Klemperer’s last gasp, this live Royal Festival Hall recording from February 1989 is a legend to the 3,000 of us who were there and even more so to many who weren’t. Klaus Tennstedt, the most sensitive and impulsive of conductors, opened the Resurrection at a tempo of such stubborn deliberation that it seemed the second coming would never come.