Rarely in the history of the gramophone can so eclectic a mix of works have been recorded to such thrilling effect in so short a space of time as was the case in Berlin in April 1939 when Victor de Sabata was invited to make six superbly engineered recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic.

With the orchestra itself in Olympian form, the sessions included one of the most kaleidoscopically vivid of all recordings of Brahms’s tragic Fourth Symphony, a rendering of Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung that is peerless in its eloquence, a vivid albeit occasionally hectic account of Kodály’s recently composed Dances of Galánta and a realisation of Respighi’s Feste romane that, were it better known, would transform the piece’s reputation.

The last is a particular revelation. How crude and uncomprehending Toscanini’s 1942 Philadelphia recording is when set alongside this, not least in the concluding Epiphany Eve festivities during which ‘La Befana’, a soot-stained witch on a broomstick, brings largesse to the children of Rome. A closed book to Toscanini, the music’s jazz and cabaret elements are meat and drink to de Sabata, whose own ‘choreographic fairytale’ Mille e una notte (1930) was conceived in much the same idiom. Similarly memorable is the Berliners’ deeply atmospheric account of ‘L’Ottobrato’ (‘October Festival’) where we experience the kind of exquisitely voiced pianissimo string-playing of which de Sabata was perhaps the first great exponent on record.

The Berlin recordings already exist on two well-transferred Istituto Discografico Italiano CDs (IDIS6406/7) but this is the first time Deutsche Grammophon has reissued all six recordings together, coupling them with the five recordings de Sabata made with the LPO for Decca in Walthamstow Town Hall in May 1946. Sadly, these are rather more problematic.

The LPO famously gave de Sabata a standing ovation after he led them through Berlioz’s overture Le carnival romain at their first meeting in April 1946. Listening to this performance recorded a month later, you can hear why. ‘Orgiastic’ is the word used by the orchestra’s principal flute, Richard Adeney, in his absorbing memoir Flute (Brimstone Press, 8/09) to describe their playing for de Sabata. A performance of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in Bristol was so intense it was met with stunned silence, until a woman screamed, and the applause erupted. The studio performance is a touch calmer.

The London sessions benefited from Decca’s fabled ‘full frequency’ sound, only to be scuppered by the poor quality of the shellac pressings. This over-manicured account of Sibelius’s Valse triste still sounds as if it’s been printed on sandpaper. By contrast, Sibelius’s En saga now has a positively silken surface. Happily so, since this is a superbly atmospheric performance, more rhythmically intent and more finely coloured than the performance Beecham recorded with the same orchestra in 1939 (HMV, 12/39).

If En saga was the high point of the LPO sessions, the Eroica was their nadir. De Sabata was a fine Beethoven conductor: witness his 1947 HMV Rome recording of the Pastoral Symphony, made as part of a series which, disappointingly, Warner Classics hasn’t seen fit to reissue for this 50th anniversary of de Sabata’s death. Sadly, the Eroica – the suavely phrased and rhythmically limp first movement in particular – is too much like a dish of exquisitely blended sauces to which the chef has omitted to add the meat. De Sabata, we now know, realised as much and was in despair throughout the sessions.

Altogether more striking is the performance of Mozart’s Requiem he conducted in December 1941 in one of Rome’s grander basilicas, designed by Michelangelo but completed by other hands: not unlike the Requiem itself. Such was the strength of de Sabata’s direction, the engineers of Italian Radio were able to set the substantial choir well back in the acoustic yet still catch the cleanly etched words and contrapuntal lines. The soloists, by contrast, are well to the fore, their diction penetrating and strong. All any performance of this incomplete Requiem can hope to do is summon up that feel of ‘forbidding majesty and deep consolation’ (Robbins Landon’s phrase) which is its principal characteristic. De Sabata’s performance does that in spades. Oddly, the 55-minute Requiem has been given a disc to itself, causing crowding elsewhere in the four-CD set and prompting the absurd decision to place the 1946 London En saga midway through the 1939 Berlin sequence. It says much for the LPO (and de Sabata) that they survive the juxtaposition more or less unscathed.