It’s taken over 35 years (and the pirates and DVDs have got there first, nine times and counting as of time of writing) but at last we have a professional audio transfer of Kleiber leading the opera that probably meant more to him than all others. If you’re not yet a convert, or a doubter, cut to the chase: go from track 18 of disc 3 (the great Trio) and you’ll hear why the Munich Festival audience cannot wait to start clapping some of the most attentively sculpted Strauss conducting, traditional romance mixed with savouring of those still ear-bending harmonies, since, well, Clemens Krauss (Guild) and a certain Erich Kleiber (Decca).

So what is especially magical? The energy, the attention to the stage drama in the music (not least its wit), the pacing – “fast” compared with Karajan but with a wonderful rubato that allows for real pointing and emotion but owes more to Kleiber’s natural instincts (and his father’s) than Viennese so-called tradition – and the slim textures (so much slimmer than Böhm’s on DG who operates at a similar pulse). Under Kleiber the opera sounds like what its creators sought to do – follow Elektra in a different vein, not retreat from it, either musically or dramatically.

In retrospect we might call this Kleiber’s first favoured Rosenkavalier cast which, like the second (Lott, van Otter, Bonney – DG, 6/01), was led by its ladies. Long-term Munich resident Claire Watson has done little finer on disc and is well “aged” in relationship to Fassbaender’s tour de force Octavian (she makes a good youth throughout and a laugh-aloud Mariandel) and Popp’s sweet but never vacant Sophie. But did Kleiber ever find an Ochs to match his girls? As with Ridderbusch here, he tended to trim their traditional excesses but never quite put enough in its place. The socalled “supporting” roles are energetically taken by an evidently fired-up house ensemble.

So good remastering, strange or discursive notes (but well translated into English) and a neat photocopy of one of Kleiber’s own scores on the cover. Impossible in the space to select a top Rosenkavalier but place this new set a high equal with Krauss, Erich Kleiber’s, the second Carlos Kleiber DVD and the private release of his La Scala performance.