Like so many great conductors from the past, recent or distant, over time Kurt Masur evolved his own sound, which was generally big and beefy, with resonant brass choirs, prominent percussion, warm-textured strings and woodwinds that tended towards expressive tone-colouring and bright, lyrical phrasing … to offset the jumbo-size brass, as in Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. One of the prominent aspects of this sturdy and well-presented collection is that it factors in not only three major orchestras that at one time or another Masur had in his charge (Leipzig Gewandhaus, New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic) but calls on the varied acoustical properties of different halls and churches. Take Liszt’s Mazeppa, which in Leipzig formed part of a complete cycle of the tone poems (included here in toto) and in New York appears on a far later (digital) Liszt/Kodály programme with the Philharmonic. Not only is the earlier version more precise and fiercely driven but the lively, close-set Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche acoustic allows for considerable clarity and a generous tonal bloom, neither of which Avery Fisher Hall quite matches.

Then there are the Brahms symphonies, all four of which are included in the present set as recorded live with the NYPO at Avery Fisher, a less mahogany sound frame than in Leipzig in 1973 (Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche again, on Decca Eloquence ELQ484 0144), though in places the New York performances have a tougher edge to them. In the Fourth, compare the two finales, the return of the principal passacaglia theme – 6'30" in New York, 6'28" in Leipzig – and the American option makes more of an impact. On the other hand, Masur’s Leipzig Third, while no less exciting than the NYPO remake, is more mellow and includes the first-movement exposition repeat, which its successor doesn’t.

The Leipzig recordings included here were set down in the New Gewandhaus, which opened its doors to the public in 1981 and, as Jon Tolansky observes in his superb booklet notes, is the only genuine concert hall in the former East Germany. Its acoustical properties are ‘very Masur’, if I may put it that way: full-bodied and resonant, with plenty of room for the brass to expand, while the timpani have potential to set up a roaring din (as they do at the close of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, one of the most impressive performances in the set). All of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies are included, the most impressive being, in this context, Nos 1, 3 and 4. Other orchestral works include a dead-in-the-water Francesca da Rimini and a disc of Tchaikovsky waltzes with the NYPO, taken from various of the composer’s works, which serves as a pleasing supplement, though there was room for Masur to include the third movement of the First Symphony and the second from the Third Orchestral Suite, both among the composer’s very best waltz movements.

A leonine Elisabeth Leonskaja takes charge of the three piano concertos plus the Concert Fantasy in New York. Regarding the Second Concerto, Jeremy Nicholas wrote in May 2005: ‘Leonskaja takes no prisoners in the outer movements, managing at times even to drown the efforts of an extraordinarily persistent cougher in the front row of Avery Fisher Hall. It doesn’t all work, but this is live, edge-of-the-seat stuff. If she fails to find quite as much poetry as others in the central movement, at least she plays it complete without Siloti’s cuts.’ If the idea of that cougher is just too off-putting, however, the set also includes an earlier (1988) Leipzig recording of the same work, also uncut but studio-recorded (coupled with the somewhat hectoring G major Grande Sonate) and musically every bit as impressive. If you want a small slice of Tchaikovsky magic at its most potent, beam up the orchestral passage just after the first movement’s big central cadenza (9'20"), where the principal theme is reharmonised and piquantly decorated, a darkly questioning episode and quite unlike any other music in the composer’s concertos. Here Masur is at his very best.

Mendelssohn was very special to Masur. ‘He was a fighter for the art of other composers as well as his own work,’ as the Maestro puts it, ‘and he fought for the fortunes of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.’ Ditto Kurt Masur: it was largely his appeal in Leipzig’s Karl-Marx-Platz in October 1989 for calm and peaceful dialogue to thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators that stopped tanks from firing as East Germany’s communist regime clung to power. A highlight of this set is a Gramophone Award-winning live 1992 performance of Elijah (Elias as here), where the Leipzig MDR Choir and a first-rate line-up of soloists including Alastair Miles and Helen Donath joins forces with the Israel Philharmonic in the Frederic R Mann Auditorium, Tel Aviv. It’s an inspired reading, uplifting and fervent, though not quite the equal of Sawallisch’s blazing Leipzig set for Philips/Decca with Theo Adam and Elly Ameling (9/69). Its sound world is quite different to the Leipzig symphony cycle (Masur’s second), which especially suits the windblown Scottish Symphony and majestic Reformation but elsewhere tends to cloud the frequent filigree in Mendelssohn’s orchestrations: the earlier (RCA) cycle was rather more detailed. Other works by the composer include the Piano and (second) Violin concertos and the Midsummer Night’s Dream music. Minor reservations aside, Masur had a real feel for this music, as he did for Schumann’s four symphonies. We’re offered his second cycle of them (with the LPO), performances full of warmth and enthusiasm.

Other symphonies programmed include a well-judged Prokofiev Fifth, where in the coda to the first movement the tam-tam out-mushrooms even Karajan’s cinematic gong on his celebrated BPO recording (DG, 6/69). We’re also offered Mahler’s First and Ninth Symphonies. Regarding the Ninth (recorded live in 1994 and which weighs in at 78'35"), David Gutman wrote (5/95): ‘Since Masur does not seek to emulate the analytical precision of Michael Gielen, his account is left beached in the over-populated no man’s land of so much modern Mahler performance, efficient but generalised, content with classical/romantic norms rather than bringing out the discontinuities in music on the edge of the modernist abyss.’ Can’t agree, I’m afraid, David: modern abysses don’t need to spill their guts at your feet (to quote Harnoncourt on Mahler). OK, Masur’s baton eschews an impassioned bedside manner but he has the music’s structure securely under his belt (as did Kubelík and Klemperer), and the very lack of excessive heat keeps the music’s lenses clear. The finale’s opening is glorious.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No 13, Babiy Yar, sets texts by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (who actually reads his poem before Masur’s powerful NYPO performance takes place). ‘No monument stands over Babiy Yar’ wept the poet, who identified with both the massacred Jews and those who survived this tragic event. What would he say today, I wonder, in the light of Putin’s attack on that very area? We must listen to this masterpiece newly humbled. ‘Technically speaking, there is little to complain about in this live New York recording’, wrote David Gutman (10/94). Basically, he thinks that the Symphony is better served elsewhere, but as with the Mahler Ninth I prefer this sort of straight (as opposed to bland) reportage to blaring histrionics. Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony is similarly affecting, Masur allowing the first movement’s boot-clad invaders to crunch the gravel to a massive crescendo that’s like a malignant Bolero. Prokofiev is additionally represented by his five varied piano concertos (the soloist is the admirable Michel Béroff, who also performs Liszt’s works for piano and orchestra), and a fully fired-up Alexander Nevsky, where the super-fast ‘Battle on the Ice’ comes within a hair’s breadth of plunging the participants through newly trampled ice into the freezing depths.

Other works are by Beethoven, Berg, Britten (a fine War Requiem), Bruch, Bruckner (Symphonies Nos 4 and 7, re-recorded in New York), Debussy, Dvořák (a truly memorable New World Symphony, plus the Eighth and overtures), Franck (Symphony), Gershwin, Ives, Kodály, more Mahler, Mussorgsky’s Pictures (an imposingly outsize, Stokowski-style orchestration by Gorchakov – note by the way the highly topical, and imposing, ‘Great Gate at Kyiv’), Ravel, Reger (Mozart Variations), Rimsky-Korsakov, Schubert, Richard Strauss and Kurt Weill (the dark, conscience-pricking song-cycle The Seven Deadly Sins). As to concertos, we have Beethoven’s Triple with Ulf Hoelscher, Christian Zacharias and Heinrich Schiff, and Leonskaja and Masur collaborating for an imposing Brahms B flat (just as Masur and pianist Cécile Ousset had done in Leipzig years earlier). Maxim Vengerov plays the Dvořák Violin Concerto and Thomas Zehetmair the Sibelius, and there’s Mozart and Mendelssohn from pianist Helen Huang, Natalia Gutman in the Schumann and Schnittke cello concertos, and Sharon Kam offers the Weber clarinet concertos. More besides, of course, most of it conveyed by way of the deepest musical sensibilities.

Kurt Masur circumvents the obvious and we should do likewise in listening to his performances. A great set, this, and let’s hope that Berlin Classics and Decca/Philips follow suit with sets of their own. In closing, I’d like to quote the former NYPO concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, who in 2012 said: ‘It takes a big personality to unite 105 players onstage – to get everybody to be as inspired as he is – and, uh, it’s hard work. And he’s just so demanding and intense that I think that he got, just by his sheer intensity of his personality, I think it sort of transformed most of us.’ And that goes for Masur’s performances in Leipzig and London, too.