Listening to the first bars of Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony one is immediately struck by the sheer fire and brimstone of Koussevitzky’s reading which fairly seethes with intensity. It’s far more involving than Boult’s contemporaneous performance recorded a few years later and definitely more invigorating than Barbirolli’s premiere performance. For me, this is the recording to have as the modern versions; although far better recorded are not a patch on the great Russian maestro who takes the music to a different level altogether.
Similar intensity involves Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”, another tour de force of orchestral virtuosity. Conversely, the “Khovanschina” Prelude is full of mystery and dark foreboding, a well nigh ideal version of a work which is not as often performed as its more famous counterpart, “Boris Goudonov”. Finally we have what is one of the most intense interpretations of Tchaikovsky’s magnificent ‘Francesca da Rimini’, astounding in its devil may care abandon and portrayals of the damned by lust.
Robert Matthew Walker’s notes are excellent and the whole enterprise can safely be listed as my disc of the year for historical recordings. If we are having more issues from the Koussevitzky back burner containing such recordings then I will await the rest with relish.
Gerald Fenech

Very warmly recommended"

These broadcast recordings made from 1943 to 1948 capture the Great Russian conductor working with congenial repertoire when he was at the height of his powers and reputation. Night an Bald Mountain is spine-chilling and Francesca da Rimini emotively supercharged. These are the sort of works where one might prefer a faster-and-louder pre-war conductor of the Nikisch school someone who is not shy about special effects. I would not have programmed them together, as too much sonic sublimity can be deadening; the Prelude is dwarfed by these massive works.
While Koussevitzky’s commercial recordings might be preferred in those instances, the Vaughan Williams Symphony is a fresh discovery: a more grand and colourful performance of this war-time work would be difficult to imagine. Best of all, the Sound is just lovely; with a blushing warmth in the strings that melts the heart. Peter Reynolds is to be commended for his remastering, which allows us to hear Koussevitzky’s orchestra under conditions as good as it gets. RADCLIFFE

Here different aspects of Koussevitzky’s greatness are revealed in a series of live recordings. Mussorgsky’s Night evokes a truly terrifying experience in a performance of extraordinary weight and vividness: the 1944 recording is good, as it is in a touchingly tender account of the same composer’s evocation of dawn breaking over the Moscow River. Tchaikovsky’s epic Symphonic Fantasy doesn’t quite have the White heat in performance possessed by Night on a Bare Mountain, and the sound is not so well­defined, but it still has sufficient passion and excitement to rival nearly all other performances one has heard. Koussevitzky was most at home in Russian and French music, maybe, but he was a dedicated Champion of contemporary Scores and he conducted a good deal of British music. If you are not familiar with Koussevitzky’s art this disc as a whole gives a good Impression of his qualities.
Alan Sanders