Bernstein recorded his Jeremiah Symphony twice (with Jennie Tourel and Christa Ludwig) and his Age of Anxiety four times (once with Philippe Entremont, twice with Lukas Foss and a filmed performance with Krystian Zimerman) and you might be forgiven for assuming that the best anybody else could likely offer is Lenny-lite; re-interpretations of Bernstein’s own interpretations overriding the necessity to take a fresh look at his scores. And that is largely what the likes of Leonard Slatkin and Andrew Litton have offered. The presence of Bernstein feels just too big to ignore and their recordings pay dewy-eyed homage to their hero, gone but never forgotten.

Marin Alsop belongs to that same generation of American conductors and, like Slatkin and Litton, she beat the inevitable path to Bernstein’s door and has since chosen to embrace the legacy of being a ‘Bernstein pupil’: when interviewers have finished with those inevitable questions about her gender, Bernstein is invariably next on their list. But then you hear Alsop’s approach to the Jeremiah and Age of Anxiety symphonies and can only marvel at how far she moves the music, and the debate surrounding it, forward. This is Bernstein for our times.

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