For most of the Nazi period, Karl Bohm was based in Dresden where his apparent political acceptability enabled him to continue the relatively liberal programming policy of the opera house. In June 1935, he premiered Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau, despite the controversy over its Stefan Zweig libretto, and, in October 1938, he was the first conductor (and dedicatee) of Daphne. After the war, he continued to champion the composer and was sporadically in the East to record his music. Being relatively isolated in this period, the Staatskapelle Dresden maintained a distinctive playing style even if the orchestra was not – or not on this occasion at any rate – on consistently world-beating form. DG had not yet found the Lukaskirche, an ideal recording venue still in use today, but, given the standards of the time (and forgetting for a moment the astonishing fidelity of Reiner’s Chicago LPs for RCA), the recording team copes admirably with the over-reverberant Kreuzkirche.
Bohm’s interpretations are lighter and more vigorous than you might expect from some of his later work in the studio. His Till is less subversive than usual, a good-natured, rather loveable rogue. The Alpine Symphony is more difficult to assess. It is only in recent years that the work has taken its place on the high table with Till Eulenspiegel and the rest, and its mysterious opening and closing sections don’t really work without more detail in the bass; its big climaxes come across as opaque. This is no complacent ramble, and the ear adjusts to the 1950s mono sound, but you may feel short-changed when the summit is reached without Karajan’s overwhelming sense of achievement. The storm is the high-point here, technologically challenged though it is. For specialists only I think.'