Barbirolli was something of a dark horse where Bruckner was concerned; five of the nine symphonies were in his repertoire though until the BBC found the wherewithal to open up its music archive none of the performances reached record. His purposeful, passionate approach to Bruckner – very much ‘from the heart to the heart’ – first blazed into view with a live 1970 Hallé Eighth (BBC Legends, 10/01). This 1964 Bruckner Third is similar in spirit, though it is ‘as live’ rather than live. After concerts in Manchester and Bradford, the performance was taken back to the Free Trade Hall where it was recorded on the floor of the hall: seats removed, no audience. The single-channel sound is spacious and imposing though the actual recording has an edge to it that suggests less than first-rate engineering.

BBC/IMG says, incorrectly, that this is the 1877 Nowak edition (first published in 1981!). The Third exists in three versions: 1873, an 1877 revision which Barbirolli may have seen in the 1950 Oeser edition, and the foreshortened, orchestrally ‘improved’, arguably spurious but undeniably effective, Bruckner/Schalk re-write of 1889. Widely favoured by conductors of Barbirolli’s generation – Böhm, Karajan, Szell and Wand all made powerful recordings of it – it is this 1889 text that is used here.

Since the Third is dedicated to Wagner, the Tannhäuser music makes a plausible fill-up, though rough playing is less acceptable here than in the symphony where Barbirolli’s fervent – occasionally audible – involvement with the music carries all before it.