Until the at-present-unavailable EMI Karajan-Rostropovich Don Quixote is issued on CD, this Kempe performance has no modern rival as an interpretation. It is also a very satisfactory recording, which transfers well to CD. The detail is clear, but it is not floodlit, as it is in the new DG Karajan, and while the soloists are perhaps a little for ward, they are almost reticently recorded compared with DG. Kempe's poetic approach to the work is magical: how memorably he keeps track of all the themes in the contrapuntal introduction and how subtly, in the famous sheep episode, he conveys both the graphic brilliance of the scoring and its equally graphic representation of mental delusion. Tortelier is at his most persuasive, far more eloquent than Harrell on Decca, and Rostal is almost an equal partner as Sancho Panza. The Don Juan is not such a tearaway performance as Reiner's with the Chicago Symphony (RCA on LP only), but is always thrilling and ardent.'