Down the years, I have managed to collect three sets of the Beethoven overtures on LP: Klemperer (matchless, by and large), Masur (serviceable) and Karajan (too many descents into suave ruthlessness). Looking at the latest CD listings, the same three names appear, though the Klemperer performances are, alas, somewhat widely scattered. Tackling the 11-strong opus of complete overtures is not, it seems, a popular pastime with conductors.

One can see why. In among pieces written for ballets and local festivities, and a ‘characteristic’ overture (Beethoven’s phrase) such as Leonore No 1, there lie four masterpieces – Egmont, Coriolan, Leonore No 2 and its ‘perfected’ remake Leonore No 3 – which marry symphonic form with a dramatic programme in a way unique in Beethoven. Where these four are concerned, only the best will do.

Here David Zinman’s performances certainly won’t do. There is a limit to what you can achieve interpretatively with zippy tempi, a bullish manner and a less than first-rate orchestra playing flat out in a large and somewhat unforgiving acoustic. When all the performances are stamped from the same die, Coriolan ends up sounding almost as cheerful as The Creatures of Prometheus. Zinman’s account of the Egmont Overture does generate a real sense of danger and revolutionary fire but the opening is unimpressive (starved minim chords in bar 2) and goodness knows where he found the cute little oboe flourish after Egmont’s execution, before the onset of the ‘Victory’ Symphony. This is not the only textual curiosity in the set (as we know from Zinman’s symphony cycle, he loves meddling with Beethoven) but it is certainly the most bizarre.

In Leonore No 3, Zinman misses the numinous quality of the music-drama at points of transition. (The awed response to the distant trumpet call sounds here like early Verdi ballet music.) I had high hopes for his account of The Consecration of the House, the ageing Beethoven’s rumbustious tribute to Handel (‘the unequalled Master of all Masters!’). It is terrifically exciting but, again, it is all very fast, a whole two minutes quicker than Klemperer in his toweringly splendid 1959 EMI recording.

The Harnoncourt selection – eight overtures recorded, mainly live, in a variety of locations – is a reissue. It boasts better playing and a rather more sophisticated approach to period sonority and musical style than the Zinman. His Coriolan is in a different class. Elsewhere, his shortcomings are a mirror-image of Zinman’s. He is arbitrary where Zinman is uniform, rhythmically slack where Zinman drives exuberantly on. Reviewing the disc in 1997, Rob Cowan qualified intermittent fascination with advice against ‘instant disposal of your Klemperers, Toscaninis or Furtwänglers’. I can only repeat the advice.