| Some twelve years ago I reviewed a Music & Arts box featuring Arturo Toscanini’s celebrated 1939 cycle of Beethoven’s Symphonies – all bar the ‘Choral’ recorded at Studio 8H – and it has since released another version that is better in some ways and worse in others. I hoped that that doyen of historical transfer engineers, Andrew Rose, would lay his hands on some aptly pristine acetates and produce state-of-the-art re-mastering, which is exactly what has happened, plus the 1940 Carnegie Hall Missa solemnis. Apart from the sound, what makes the concerts different is that these are complete, including Overtures and orchestrated chamber pieces. |