If the name Karl Richter brings to mind a musical dinosaur whose inevitable extinction was hastened by the advent of warm-blooded, more adaptable creatures – Raptus harnoncourtus, perhaps – then these DVDs will present no more enticing a prospect than picking over the bones of a roast does for a vegetarian. Even ardent Richter-philes will take little from the family-made hagiography. Hyperbole intoned over stock photos alternates with excerpts from music videos including the four under review (in their unremastered state). One snatch of an interview suggests to me that appalling teeth may have been the cause of Richter’s famously dour mien – I wonder what he made of Mann’s obsession with inner spiritual health being mirrored by dental health. The one significant illumination comes from a pair of audio-only excerpts, of Richter in the Fourth Symphonies of Schumann and Bruckner: strong, patient and fiery.

These qualities irradiate the varied ensembles and textures of the Brandenburg Concertos. He uses a full string complement for the nine-voice Third, but one per part for the Sixth, which gets the most nuanced and accomplished reading of the lot (always excepting Richter’s clanky harpsichord in front of his own beat). Each concerto is staged in a different chamber of a Munich Schloss, so the overall similarity in recorded acoustic is disconcerting, not to say fishy. Though the hangdog faces among the players belie the supposition, perhaps there was a certain holiday atmosphere to the sessions (April 1970): Richter takes risks where he plays safe in DG’s audio-only studio ambience. This would explain the elaborated cadenza that links the two movements of the Third Brandenburg, and his own overcooked continuo throughout the St John Passion (September 1970).

The St John is the only write-off of the four. Arne Arnbom’s direction hides most of the choruses, chorales and arias behind stills of anonymous medieval Passion representations. This is plain perverse for Helen Donath’s ‘Ich folge dir gleichfalls’ or the lutenist accompanying Hermann Prey in ‘Betrachte meine Seele’; less so for Horst Laubenthal’s dogged plod through his two arias. The same empty church and self-consciously monumental presentation also vitiate the considerable appeals of the B minor Mass (September 1969), not least of which are Janowitz’s ‘Laudamus te’ and the disciplined fervour of the Munich Bach Choir. Richter’s DG studio accounts of these two works are not superseded, but watching Richter’s own choir reveals the mutual benefit of their relationship. Its mostly young and attractive choristers sing with parts but off them, fixing on Richter’s eyes and impenetrable beat with the devotion of an Evangelical gathering. If only he had asked them to sing more quietly more often.

Hugo Käch makes them, not Richter, the focal point of the St Matthew Passion (May 1971). A vast white cross overshadows their ranks; for the chorales they gather as a leaderless congregation. Peter Schreier is a news-anchor Evangelist, reporting ‘as events unfold’ but at one remove from the action. Continuity of musical action is forsaken; the dramatic effect veers between engrossing (the opening chorus), fatally static (Ernst Gerold Schramm’s Christus) and arch (the final accompanied recitative, ‘Nun ist der Herr’, all soft focus and middle-distance stares). In the three great choral pillars, as elsewhere on these discs, the paradox of an unyielding tempo with rhythmic slackness makes for frustrating listening. I have been fascinated to see Richter at work, but I think he was better off in front of the microphones than the cameras.