Thanks to his unusually strong affinity with Haydn and grasp of classical structures, Josef Krips proves a near-ideal conductor for the Fourth Symphony. Noting Mahler’s repeated ‘nicht eilen’ (‘don’t rush’) markings, Krips never hurries the music or indulges in unnecessary point-making, least of all in the radiant variations of the poco adagio third movement. The score unfolds with natural charm and warmth, lovingly communicated by the LSO’s string section – led by Hugh Maguire, whose ‘Death the Fiddler’ is gauged at just the right level of grotesquery. With Suzanne Danco a pristine soloist in the finale, childlike but never childish, this is a beautifully-judged performance of a work which can too easily sound overstated, faux-naif or both.

Josef Krips initially thought to make his name as a violinist; but after a year’s study at the Musikakademie (1920/21), he changed direction from pit to podium, becoming a private pupil of Felix Weingartner and later his assistant. Following a seven-year tenure at Karlsruhe (1926-33), he returned to Vienna’s Volksoper and Staatsoper, while forging links with the Salzburg Festival. His father’s Jewish birth barred Krips from official posts after Hitler’s 1938 annexation of Austria: he spent much of World War II secretly coaching singers in Vienna, taking a factory job to avoid being drafted into the German army. After 1945, as one of the few conductors untainted by Nazi association, Krips appeared regularly in Vienna and Salzburg. Having helped restore the Vienna Philharmonic and Staatsoper to their pre-war excellence, he took on the same task for the London Symphony Orchestra, as its principal conductor from 1950 to 1954