Brahms, Johannes/Bartók, Béla: Symphony 1 (Naxos Audio CD)

• Béla Bartók’s pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin was banned after its first performance in 1926, but the composer’s orchestral suite quickly became a popular concert work, appreciated for its energetic rhythms and daring harmonies.

• Though facetiously dubbed ‘Beethoven’s Tenth’, Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 is also, in its own way, a no less revolutionary work which charts a journey from darkness to light from its brooding introduction to its euphoric finale.

• This splendid 2008 recording joins other fine LSO albums available from Naxos. It is the debut recording for American conductor Jonathan Pasternack.