It says Erato on the box but these recordings from the second most prolific conductor with the surname Järvi are mostly familiar from their original release on Virgin Classics. Paavo Järvi enjoyed subsequent relationships with Sony and now Alpha but this 31-disc set charts the establishment and blossoming of the conductor’s recording career, mostly with associated orchestras in Birmingham, Tallinn, Stockholm, Frankfurt and Paris. It is unusually rich in quality and scope – and not just for those with an interest in Baltic and Nordic music.

Still, that’s a good place to start, and indeed the box starts strongly with my library-choice recording of Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite from Stockholm, which enunciates detail while managing to absorb it into the tapestry of the bigger structural picture while accumulating scintillating tension. Järvi has long been strongest in a handful of orchestral works by the Finnish composer that others have either avoided or struggled with, and the attraction in much of the remaining Sibelius is its rarity. The Maiden in the Tower and Snöfrid may be second-rate but they are engaging and important to hear, even if Solveig Kringelborn sounds a little pinched in the former and Vänskä on BIS is more atmospheric in the latter. While Järvi’s Stockholm Kullervo sounds less emphatic than the current competition, his Tallinn recording of Grieg’s complete Peer Gynt remains striking, full of wildness and authenticity, and a good companion to the still fine disc of the Norwegian composer’s orchestral music including the dances Norwegian and Symphonic.

As Järvi’s repertoire has become more international (some might say mainstream), it’s easy to forget how much Estonian music he brought to worldwide attention. There are 14 works by Arvo Pärt included, with two separate accounts of the Symphony No 1 – one of many works here that remind us of the severe, wild, polystylistic music Pärt created early in his career (Pro et contra, the Cello Concerto and Symphony No 2). The composer’s Symphony No 3 heralds the Tintinnabuli style that is further explored via staple works.

Disc 2 contains Eduard Tubin’s Symphony No 11 and three tone poems by Erkki-Sven Tüür, including the deeply moving and quintessentially Estonian Zeitraum. Disc 17 is the Tüür album plenty will remember, headlined by Evelyn Glennie’s turn in the Symphony No 4, Magma, but continuing with three tone poems that show Pärt’s influence on the younger composer. In respect of this whole box, it’s hard to think of a single product that contains a better tracing of Estonian orchestral music up to 2010.

Shostakovich provides a link from the Nordic to the Slavic and Järvi’s Tallinn disc of the Russian composer’s cantatas hasn’t lost its appeal, with muscular performances from the ENSO and the sort of oily delivery from Aleksei Tanovitski that you crave from a Russian bass. This seldom-heard Shostakovich is by turns ominous and jaunty, soaring like Martin≤ in places. The composer’s Piano Concerto No 1, with soloist Leif Ove Andsnes, is included on a live disc recorded with the CBSO whose highlight is Britten’s charmingly impish Piano Concerto, where Andsnes’s take on the final movement contrasts markedly with Britten’s own. Järvi’s performance of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances has been eclipsed in elán and elasticity by others but there’s a fine account of the Symphony No 3, also from Paris, soft and snappy. Myaskovsky’s Cello Concerto with Truls Mørk in Birmingham shines brighter than the concertante Prokofiev either side.

A disc with Barbara Hendricks suggests opera might be Järvi’s Achilles heel. Many of the excerpts lack theatre and the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin is infuriatingly stodgy. The final scene from Capriccio works best but, like the Paris Brahms Requiem, can feel prosaic even if Järvi’s Fauré Requiem sounds delectable, despite the same reined-in approach. The Parisian all-Dutilleux disc is a treasure, a reminder that Métaboles is an outright masterpiece. Many of the concertante discs are self-recommending: Nicholas Angelich’s leonine Brahms concertos from Frankfurt; Gautier Capuçon in Dvořák and Herbert and his brother Renaud fiery and impassioned in Bruch, Sarasate and Lalo. Not at the same level is a Schumann Cello Concerto from Mørk that surely needs a little more lyricism and lightness, which Bruch’s Kol Nidrei gets straight afterwards. The CBSO Bernstein disc is bursting with joie de vivre.

From Frankfurt we get Mahler’s first two symphonies – a rooted Totenfeier and a Resurrection sellable courtesy of Alice Coote and Natalie Dessay, but without the most impactful choral work. And finally from Paris? Well, Järvi’s landmark Bizet album, of course. Nearly two decades on I found the fillers (Roma, Petite Suite) more enjoyable than the Symphony. As a previously unreleased bonus, we hear an Orchestre de Paris party piece, Franck’s Symphony in D minor. Again it’s eclipsed by the coupling: Albert Roussel’s Symphony No 3 in an account full of the strong rhythmic profiling and linear momentum that characterise so much of what Järvi did, and still does.