Mahler
Symphony No 3 in D Minor
Gerhild Romberger ms, Cantemus Children’s Choir, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer
Channel Classics CCSSA38817

As a schoolboy I once read a review of Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt’s Beethoven Nine which carried the headline “A Ninth to live with”. This phrase came to mind when listening to Iván Fischer’s Mahler Three. It’s not the greatest Mahler Three I’ve ever heard: that laurel surely belongs to Jansons and his Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw account which I reviewed in 2011 and wrote “playing not just beyond praise but beyond belief”, but I’d also recommend Fischer’s unhesitatingly in terms of the playing, recording and interpretation. It’s the sort of unexaggerated yet...