If Max Reger's reputation as an impenetrably contrapuntal heavyweight continues to defy critical justification, this disc—and quite a few like it (many of them from the Koch Schwann stable)—should help turn the tables. Reger's music could be warm, witty, clear-cut, serenely beautiful and melodically haunting in a way that few of his contemporaries and virtually none of his successors seem willing to acknowledge. His is a cause yet to be espoused, although artists such as Karl Bohm, Joseph Keilberth, Eugen Jochum, Rudolf Serkin and Adolf Busch cupped a flame of interest that might otherwise have died.
Horst Stein is probably Reger's most productive CD exponent, and this disc follows on the heels of Ein Ballettsuite, the Piano and Violin Concertos and the Mozart, Hiller and Beethoven Variations. The Konzert im alten Still could happily serve as a fine access point for most non-Regerians, its telling modulations and piquant instrumentation combining for a delightful, sometimes tongue-in-cheek pastiche on the baroque concerto grosso, and its balmy Largo reminding us of the poignant violin writing in ''The hermit playing the violin'' (Bocklin Symphonic Poems). If you suspect that Reger lacks humour, then listen to how, in the first movement, he suddenly switches from elegant wind and string dialogue to a bombastic, multi-layered peroration that seems never to exhaust itself. Stein, whose Reger conducting style is admirably unaffected, moulds and controls the proceedings with a fine sense of balance.
However, the massive, 50-minute Sinfonietta is quite another matter. In fact, even Reger (who was, by all accounts, a most accomplished conductor) had finally to concede that it was over-long and overloaded. The Larghetto and the quieter sections of the closing Allegro con spirito are probably its strongest assets, but elsewhere an intimidating density of texture does little to assist what are quite often interesting contrapuntal arguments. Here, perhaps, both performance and recording might usefully have allowed chinks of light to illuminate a formidable, thickset structure. I'd say that this is Reger's most difficult large-scale work, although it's certainly worth hearing. Incidentally, those who don't object to the constraints of mono sound are strongly advised to investigate the two-CD set, ''Hermann Scherchen conducts Reger'' (CPO (CD) CPO999 143-2), which includes fine performances of the Beethoven and Mozart Variations, the Romantische Suite, the Lustspiel Ouverture, An die Hoffnung and what is surely Reger's most engaging large-scale piece, his Serenade in G. Nevertheless, Stein's work remains invaluable and I eagerly await his next Reger disc.'