Christoph von Dohnányi and the Cleveland Orchestra were both beneficiaries and victims of the classical recording boom and bust of the 1980s and ’90s. Although they graced Decca’s catalogue with some of the greatest orchestral recordings ever made, many releases were poorly promoted or had limited international distribution, and were destined for early deletion. All the more reason to celebrate this highly anticipated and desperately needed box-set that gathers all of Decca’s Dohnányi/Cleveland recordings under one roof. It contains 40 CDs packaged in original-jacket facsimiles, ordered more or less chronologically by composer. A 66-page booklet contains full discographical information and production credits, along with a useful and informative essay by Andrew Stewart that discusses the material in the context of Dohnányi’s long career.

Dohnányi’s tenure as the Cleveland Orchestra’s Music Director between 1984 and 2002 both upheld and built upon the standards of orchestral discipline, stylistic cultivation and utter consistency associated with his formidable predecessor George Szell, who transformed the orchestra into the first-tier ensemble it remains today. Indeed, Dohnányi once complained that ‘we give a great concert and George Szell gets the credit’. Yet give Dohnányi credit for equalling and sometimes surpassing Szell in the Brahms, Schumann, Dvořák, Bartók, Bruckner and Mozart works featured in this set, abetted by the myriad sonic advantages of Decca’s production team.

Take Mozart’s last six symphonies, for example. The impactful close-miking of Szell’s stereo recordings conveyed total top-to-bottom transparency, crisp rhythms, uniformly clean articulation at any tempo and a genuine chamber-music aesthetic. While these traits characterise Dohnányi’s interpretations to a T, Decca’s more distant yet naturally balanced sound imparts a warmer, less abstract and more vocally orientated spin to the slow movements. Eine kleine Nachtmusik stands out for a brisker than usual closing Rondo marked by deliciously scurrying counterpoint. Two discs showcase the orchestra’s first-desk soloists in Mozart concertos. The Sinfonia concertante features legendary concertmaster Daniel Majeske two years before his death from cancer alongside viola player Robert Vernon. ‘The two soloists play with sinewy determination, and rather more severely, even competitively, in order to cut through the rumbustious orchestral playing’, wrote Hilary Finch about the outer movements (2/95). Yet I find nothing remotely unruly concerning the balance of power. And what’s not to love about John Mack’s crystalline perfection in the Oboe Concerto?

Dohnányi’s Berlioz Symphonie fantastique is not one to foam at the mouth and shoot from the hip in Charles Munch fashion, nor flex its muscles à la Solti in Chicago. Even the near-breakneck tempo in ‘Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat’ doesn’t faze Dohnányi’s cool demeanour, nor derail the orchestra players one iota. Perhaps the music comes off more like Berlioz’s Symphony No 1 rather than a tone parallel to an opium trip, certainly when compared alongside the sonically superior 1982 Maazel/Cleveland Telarc Fantastique. For the record, Dohnányi includes the optional cornet part in ‘Un bal’ and the repeats in ‘Marche au supplice’.

No qualms, however, concerning Dohnányi’s unambiguously great Schumann cycle. Symphonies Nos 1, 2 and 4 feature ideally proportioned tempo relationships and bracing rhythmic élan. The slow transition into the Fourth’s whiplash finale takes one’s breath away. Dohnányi doesn’t go so far as Szell did in regard to orchestral retouchings, yet he comes up with discreetly effective remedies for problem spots. One revealing example concerns the Rhenish Symphony (No 3), where Schumann’s thick orchestration obscures the first-movement theme’s canonic counterstatements. I credit my American colleague David Hurwitz for pointing out Dohnányi’s solution: ‘He lets the horns play the “head motive” at each entrance then cuts them out so that the woodwinds can be heard. It works wonderfully, both more colourful than the original, but also true to its timbral character, and it’s typical of this lively and sensitive performance generally.’ Too bad that Decca didn’t (or couldn’t) license the magnificent Dohnányi/Cleveland Brahms symphony cycle from Warner Classics, but at least we have the excellent Brahms and Schumann Violin Concerto disc with Joshua Bell.

Those who admire the steady rhythms and terraced dynamics in Herbert von Karajan’s Bruckner recordings will find similar qualities in Dohnányi’s versions of Symphonies Nos 3 through 9 (he never got around to the first two), albeit with less blended, more differentiated textural strands. In Symphony No 3, Dohnányi is one of the few to strike a judicious balance between the swift string-writing and the brass chorales. No 4 is supremely well played, though a tad regimented in comparison with Günter Wand’s poetic power or the joyfully unleashed Barenboim/Chicago recording. No 5 features one of the clearest and most ideally aligned fourth-movement fugues on disc, while the scrupulous ensemble unanimity in No 6’s Adagio does not preclude expressive intensity. No 7 is on the cool side (no match for Jochum/Dresden’s fullness of body and spiritual depth), but No 8 offers an Adagio where the conductor’s rapt concentration and close attention to rhythmic values make the movement sound faster than its 29-minute duration. No 9’s Scherzo approximates the savagery of Jochum/Dresden in leaner, less massive terms; after all, Dohnányi is essentially a line guy, while Jochum is a Brucknerian chord guy.

Was Dohnányi the only music director of an American orchestra to record an all-Smetana disc? If so, this delightful collection of overtures and dances had the field to itself. Although Szell’s Dvořák Symphonies Nos 7‑9 and Slavonic Dances have long held reference standing, Dohnányi’s still hold the sonic and interpretative edge. In Symphony No 7, Dohnányi eschews Szell’s textual liberties (reinforcing violins and woodwinds with horns, for example), and plays the work as scored, resulting in a clearer, more piercing first-movement climax. The Eighth’s finale receives one of the most headlong, cohesive and joyful readings on disc, while Dohnányi takes uncommon care over the New World Scherzo’s canonic entrances, as did Otto Klemperer at a markedly slower tempo. In the Sixth Symphony one may miss the old Karel Ančerl recording’s ripeness and geniality but Dohnányi’s lean and muscular approach is no less valid. Yet such forthrightness arguably undermines the speech-like nuances that conductors such as Charles Mackerras brought out in Janáček’s Taras Bulba.

Much ink has been spilled over the aborted Cleveland Ring cycle. Decca undertook studio recordings of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in the early 1990s, which sold poorly, despite generally good reviews. After delaying sessions for Siegfried and Götterdämmerung several times, Decca ultimately dropped the Cleveland Orchestra from its roster in February 1998. As music critic Donald Rosenberg reported, either the orchestra would have to raise $1.5 million to subsidise studio recordings, or $500,000 to record live performances and hold patch sessions in order to finish The Ring. According to the orchestra, Dohnányi felt that recording live would compromise the standards they set in the studio, while Gabriele Schnaut (the Walküre Brünnhilde and Dohnányi’s choice in the role for the remaining operas) refused to participate in a recording that would not be released on a major label. In any event, I second Alan Blyth’s positive response to Schnaut (10/97) and am moved anew by Alessandra Marc’s vulnerable Sieglinde. However, it’s in the ensemble-driven Das Rheingold where Dohnányi’s Clevelanders truly act like onstage characters more than expert accompanists – but are the percussionists banging on random pots and pans during the descent into Nibelheim?

Dohnányi made only one Richard Strauss disc in Cleveland, but it’s a keeper. Ein Heldenleben transpires in the brisk and incisive Fritz Reiner/Chicago Symphony tradition, highlighted by a ferocious battle scene where you truly hear everything, and I mean everything! The same goes for Till Eulenspiegel, where the rapid first-desk woodwind exchanges hold their own against stinging tutti rejoinders from the brass section, and the climaxes manage to be firmly tethered and wildly unbuttoned at the same time.

We now come to the elephant in the room, and the only composer in this collection for whom Dohnányi shows little innate affinity. Notwithstanding the remarkable horizontal clarity throughout Mahler’s Symphonies Nos 5, 6 and 9, the climaxes never reach their emotional boiling temperature, and mood swings are minimised. Granted, No 1 fares better (listen to the brass section’s controlled frenzy in the finale’s climaxes), but notice the cymbal player falling out of sync in the Fourth Symphony’s first-movement climax: why wasn’t this passage remade? By contrast, the Dohnányi/Cleveland partnership raised the bar in such 20th-century classics as Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra and Harrison Birtwistle’s volcanically labyrinthine Earth Dances. One wouldn’t think that a harrowing epic such as Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony would suit Dohnányi’s classicist temperament, yet the composer’s command of large-scale forms and foolproof orchestration totally play to this conductor’s gifts. In particular, the concisely calibrated string articulation and dynamic gradations in the Allegretto create a hypnotic atmosphere and feeling of tension and release that make most other recordings sound generalised. I hadn’t heard this exceptionally engineered Shostakovich Tenth recording before now and it’s not to be missed. Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta yield nothing to longstanding catalogue favourites, while Varèse’s Amériques, Martinů’s Concerto for string quartet and orchestra, Ruggles’s Sun-Treader and the complete Webern orchestral works may well be the crown jewels of Dohnányi’s Cleveland legacy.

To be sure, the Decca box doesn’t tell the whole Dohnányi/Cleveland story. Their Telarc catalogue (which includes a stellar Beethoven cycle) deserves its own comprehensive box-set, while the Cleveland Orchestra Association’s 10-CD collection of archival live performances (5/02) warrants reissue. Still, with the exception of the Mahler items, Dohnányi’s Decca Cleveland Orchestra recordings belong in every serious collection. Get this box-set while you can.