I recently had the good fortune to review a box-set devoted to recordings by an excellent living conductor (I shan’t say which or who, just confirm that it wasn’t for these pages). Once finished, I realised that for all my genuine enthusiasm there had been something missing. What was it? Listening to the second volume of ICA’s Leopold Stokowski BBC broadcasts suddenly brought home to me why, for all their excellence, the later non-Stokowski recordings had ultimately missed the hoped-for bullseye: charisma. You might not agree with everything Stokowski does (the synthetic cannon shots as thundered out for 1812 at the Royal Albert Hall in June 1969 sound more like a terrorist attack) but, boy, they have impact. His own Disneyfied orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (BBC SO, 1963, in impressive stereo) sounds infinitely more Russian than Ravel’s, while Ravel’s Second Daphnis et Chloé Suite (New Philharmonia, 1966) is a Dionysian tour de force and at the close of Tippett’s heartfelt Concerto for Double String Orchestra (LSO, Edinburgh Festival 1961, which takes a few seconds to get into its stride) the composer rushed on to the stage to kiss the conductor’s hand.

The first three CDs of the set are reissues of single discs from about 20 years ago, while the final three are new releases. OK, the 91-year maestro might not command quite the level of attack he brought to Dvořák’s New World Symphony (New Philharmonia, 1973) years earlier, but the outer movements’ gathering storm clouds make an imposing Yosemite landscape of the piece and Paul Baily’s transfers are superb. Add a probing Nielsen Sixth, a youthful Beethoven Ninth, a (cut) Tchaikovsky Fifth that brought the house down, imposing Wagner, a Scriabin Poem of Ecstasy that scorches to a climactic conclusion and much else, and you have the basis of a fine-sounding set which, like Vol 1 (Replay, 7/24), is utterly unmissable.

So too is Eloquence’s collection of Mercury recordings of the orchestra that developed as a result of violent unrest in Hungary against communist rule, Philharmonia Hungarica, which made its first recording in Vienna for Philips in October 1957, a zestful mono coupling of Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings – perhaps the best recording we have of the work aside from Rudolf Barshai’s stereo version with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra (Decca, also issued by Eloquence) – and Leó Weiner’s gutsy suite of Hungarian Folk Dances, Op 18. The remainder of the set is in impactful stereo, mostly engineered in 1958 by the Mercury team as presented in HD transfers of first-generation three-track tapes with a fabulous three-to-two-channel mix by Thomas Fine (son of Mercury’s original recording engineer C Robert Fine). The one exception is a coupling of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Dance Suite, recorded by Philips in 1974. A Mercury-recorded Dance Suite (also included) has marginally more tension but less swagger in the finale. From the same period Weiner’s orchestration of Bartók’s Two Romanian Dances, Sz43 (not to be confused with the more popular Romanian Dances, Sz56) shares a disc with dashing, strongly idiomatic performances of Kodály’s Marosszék and Galánta Dances.

‘Wienerwalzer Paprika’ – surely Dorati’s finest LP featuring this sort of repertoire – includes such popular gems as The Skaters’ Waltz and The Merry Widow, and there’s a richly textured account of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and a pleasingly prophetic Haydn symphony coupling (Dorati would go on to record generally excellent performances of all the symphonies with this orchestra for Decca), offering us poised but energetic readings of the Surprise and Drumroll Symphonies. Perhaps the series’ hit is a disc of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances (all three books), stylishly performed and captured in sound that never shows its age.

Much that features in Rhine Classics’ set of Sergio Fiorentino’s Saga recordings (like Mercury’s Dorati set presented in facsimiles of their original LP sleeve designs) is also of interest, although I never recall seeing the complete Chopin Nocturnes – mostly taken at a broad pace and high in dramatic incident – on LP. These transfers are in the main good, although visited on occasion with residual vinyl surface noise.

Among the concertos included is Gershwin’s F major with the LPO under conductor/jazz violinist Hugo Rignold (who in his day was rated, fiddle-wise, alongside Stéphane Grappelli, Joe Venuti and Eddie South) where a second, previously unissued stereo version offers us a slow movement with different takes. Fiorentino and Rignold certainly capture the spirit of the piece, while Fiorentino goes all out to demonstrate the virtuoso elements in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, Liszt’s First (said to be in mono or ‘pseudo-stereo’ but clearly in crudely engineered genuine stereo), the Schumann Concerto and the Tchaikovsky First. Generally speaking, the solo works (including Chopin’s Waltzes and Preludes and much Liszt) are the most individual, performance-wise, Chopin’s second Prelude in A minor playing for an amazingly solemn 3'48" (the more ‘regular’ Maurizio Pollini on DG stretches to just 2'17"). I can’t trace a previous CD reissue of this material – certainly not a ‘Saga only’ Fiorentino collection – so we should be grateful to Rhine Classics for this well produced set.

The recordings

Great Recordings Newly Remastered, Vol 2

Leopold Stokowski

ICA Classics (ICAB5183)

The Mercury Masters

Philharmonia Hungarica / Antal Dorati

Mercury Eloquence (ELQ484 5517)

The Complete Saga Album Collection

Sergio Fiorentino

Rhine Classics RH033