"I enjoyed this performance enormously. Davis's Mahler is perhaps too restless, too blatantly 'conducted' for some tastes, but his occasionally heavy-handed manipulations of tempo are at least symptomatic of a desire to communicate a personal vision of and affection for Mahler's score. Both playing and recording are of exceptional standard, even if the lack of ironic edge to the sound lends the music-making a somewhat old fashioned air (strikingly at odds with RCA's strident, pop-inspired packaging). Davis's scherzo is warm and characterful in a rather cumbersome Sort of way, but his slow movement is a marvel -elevated in feeling and blessedly free of the intrusive inflexions which mar an otherwise refreshing account of the opening movement. No more affecting account has appeared for a decade and only Maazel's Vienna Philharmonic produce such glorious string tone. After this, the finale disappoints just a little. The 'operatic' soloist does not really point her words with sufficient poignancy -nor does she seem willing or able to sing quietly in her upper register - and Sir Cohn again insists on playing up the composer's expressive hesitations, adding one or two of his own. This may not be wholly idiomatic Mahler and yet, like so many recent discs from this source, it has abundant humanity and an extraordinary lack of artifice. The sympathetic acoustic of the Herkulessaal, well caught, is great asset.

-- Gramophone [7/1996]