[Bělohlávek] could get under the skin of Janacek’s music, drawing out its folk roots and speech rhythms, its soul-searching and truthfulness, its sheer humanity. The main work here is the Glagolitic Mass, given an expansive performance of great depth…The Sinfonietta is a joy from first to last, an unbuttoned delight. The low brass is great, rasping and grunting and belching merrily at the garrulous woodwinds.

Bělohlávek gives [the Mass] plenty of space from the off (the opening is notably more expansive than that of Charles Mackerras on his landmark recording from the 1980s), and this coupled with the rustic, almost folksy edge of the oboes and brass throughout intensifies the impression that this is a piece that has one foot in the great outdoors and another in the cathedral.

The energy and exuberance of Belohlavek’s conducting and the brilliant playing of the orchestra, above all the brass and woodwind, betray not a hint of the cancer that blighted the maestro’s last years. These are “classic” accounts by musicians who have the idiom in their blood.