These are excerpts from the more than 150 live concerts broadcast by Boston’s public television station WGBH between 1955 and 1979. Legal issues have meant that most of the more than 100 transmissions that survive have never been seen since the day they went out on air. The mild-mannered Munch, who took over the reins of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1948 from the autocratic Koussevitzky, inherited what was arguably the finest orchestra in the world at that time. A more collegial figure, always mindful of his experience as an orchestral violinist, he is an unshowy but very watchable figure on the podium, his face often wreathed in a beatific smile, his arms, as Richard Dyer observes in his amiable booklet, flung wide “as if to embrace the music…souplesse for him is a greater virtue than precision”.

Of the three items on ICAD5015, orchestral excerpts from Act 3 of Die Meistersinger come first (Munch preferred this sequence of the Prelude, Dance of the Apprentices and Procession of the Mastersingers to the more popular Overture). Munch was noted for his performances of French music and the next item, from a year later (1961), is treasure indeed: Franck’s D minor Symphony, searing, warm-blooded and slightly brisker than Monteux’s benchmark recording made the same year with the Chicago Symphony. But while the visual element of the transmission is no more or less lacklustre than other broadcasts of the period (overhead shots are much favoured), the recorded sound as captured in Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre and a strident brass section that rides roughshod over the strings make for less than ideal listening.

More French music completes the DVD – Fauré’s concert suite from the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande – but it is Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite (this Munch conducts with the score) and particularly Debussy’s Ibéria and La mer on ICAD5014 that are especially valuable. La mer was very much the Boston ensemble’s property (they gave the American premiere in 1907), while sitting among Munch’s players are Louis Speyer (cor anglais) and Rene Voisin (trumpet), both of whom had played in the world premiere of The Rite of Spring. In addition there are frequent shots of Doriot Dwyer (flute), then the only female section principal in any major American orchestra, appointed by Munch in 1952 (she retired in 1990). The picture quality deteriorates slightly as the vivid performance progresses, one which is a compliment to, but not a replacement for, Munch’s famous 1956 RCA recording.