Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra reviews

This box set is a trip down memory lane, with flexible and attractive packaging, and above all a full text in German and English, and a long and stimulating introductory essay. Marek Janowski presents Humperdinck’s masterpiece with a light touch, very much as he did his complete Wagner series, but much more appropriately. Tempos are on the rapid side, a welcome change from the heavy-handed efforts of some recent stagings and recordings of the opera.

I can sympathise with Vladimir Jurowski’s evident desire to combat hyperinflation in the opening of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Sometimes this spectacular musical daybreak is worked up so much that it utterly eclipses the rest of the work. The sensitive, finely shaped, searching performance that follows on makes a good case for playing things down at the start. The trouble is, the opening now sounds perfunctory – as though Jurowski just can’t wait to get to the ‘real’ business.