Having graduated from Karel Ancerl's conducting class at the Prague Academy, the late Zdenek Kosler worked briefly under Bernstein in New York and conducted Strauss's Salome at the Vienna Staatsoper as long ago as 1965. His Alpensinfonie, taped live incidentally, is a competent professional job which none the less lacks the conviction of the very best, a comfortably relaxed ramble with generally unimaginative phrasing, little emphasis on textural clarity and not a great deal of cumulative tension. The summit is approached without the requisite sense of anticipation – such lethargic tempos should only be attempted by a conductor with Karajan's supernatural grip – and the further broadening at the top leaves everyone in the lurch. The valedictory stages are yet more sluggish.
Given some fallible playing and climaxes which lack intensity and even seem slightly recessed, this is not exactly competitive in a digital field still dominated by Karajan's variously imprecise but uniquely imposing reading. For a generally faster alternative, sonically uncontrived, Previn's Telarc recording is a considerable success. So too is Barenboim's for Erato – cool and restrained perhaps, yet more truthful than many in evoking the chamber-like aspects of Strauss's scoring. Best of all, by common consent, is Kempe, so long as you can accept analogue sound and don't mind investing in a boxed set. I should perhaps mention that whereas the remastered Karajan has 22 tracks, Supraphon provide just one for a piece that lasts the best part of an hour here, and seems longer.'