"Big sounds, big rubatos, big everything." That's how Edward Seckerson summed up a previous, LPO Live reclamation of Tennstedt conducting Mahler. The qualities which impressed him in that Sixth are also in ecidence here in the first... the bonus items are unexpected: a short interview touching on Tennstedt's personal vision of Mahler as a fellow-sufferer and, curiously, a performance of Glinka's showpiece, slower and friendlier than usual, something of a non sequitur. The booklet contains a helpful contextualising note. David Gutman, Gramophone

...it's gratifying that Klaus Tennstedt's Mahler with the London Philharmonic still stands head and shoulders above some stiff conpetition. Tennstedt's brief, mercurial career, late 1970s to early 1990s (he died in 1998) is now the stuff of legend, emphasised by this Mahler 1 appearing on the BBC Legends label. It's a live performance from January 1990...which reveals in all its complicated, stupendous glory his love-affair with the orchestra...he had an instinctive grasp of what Mahler wanted from his scores and what he wanted them to express, a soundworld infinitely more varied than the glossy sumptuousness of Karajan, for example.
Above all, its sense of purpose comes across with thrilling immediacy, giving the symphony a narrative drive that at times almost seems supra-musical...
Also on the disc is the Overture to "Ruslan and Ludmilla", not core repertoire for Tennstedt, but thrillingly done, and there is also a short talk between John Amis and the conductor. A very strongly recommended release. Peter Reed, Classicasource

It seems that Tennstedt commands the same respect in Mahler that Jascha Horenstein achieved, a romantic's vision guided by an acute sensitivity to Mahler's special nuances. The opening movement, ever lyrically attuned to the song-impulse in Mahler, basks in Mahler's slowly evolving harmonies, the strings winds, horns and harp always forward in our musical consciousness...by the end of the movement, the vivid energies converge and collide in a veritable eddy of transcendetal passions... The entire last movement becomes both Mahler's and Tennstedt's fervent search for spritual victory in the midst of moral crisis...the struggles subside, only to rise, De Profundis, with renewed frenzy, a "darkling plain" where contrapuntal convulsions of the spirit fight it out in Tennstedt's superheated versions. At the last upheaval, Mahler's synthesis of Heaven and Hell, the audience at the Royal Festival Hall erupt in wild appreciation. Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition