The London Symphony Orchestra’s ongoing Janáček-in-concert series is being released in instalments on its in-house label LSO Live. The follow up to last year’s incandescent Kát’a Kabanová is this equally impressive recording of Jenůfa, captured in January 2024 at London’s Barbican Centre with Simon Rattle, the orchestra’s conductor emeritus, at the helm.

Jenůfa was the work in which the Czech composer first exhibited his distinctive voice, and it remains his most-performed opera. Based on Gabriela Preissová’s 1894 play Her Stepdaughter, the central story revolves around three young people: the tender-hearted Jenůfa, her feckless cousin Števa who is the father of her unborn child, and Števa’s half-brother Laca who loves Jenůfa despite her obvious preference for his rival.

Jenůfa’s stepmother, the sternly practical Kostelnička, ensures that the baby is born in secret, but when Števa refuses to marry her stepdaughter, she turns to Laca. Convincing him that the baby has died, she secretly carries it out into the winter night and pushes it through a hole in the ice. When the murder is discovered the next spring, the Kostelnička confesses her crime only to be forgiven in...