Product Review

ü These 13CDs, containing Munch’s entire Warner Classics catalogue, comprise recordings made between i) 1935 and 1949 (CD7-13) and ii) 1965 and 1968 ((the year of the conductor’s death, CD1-6). ü The repertoire on the 13 CDs is wide-ranging – from the Baroque era to the mid-20th century (Bach and Vivaldi to Dutilleux and Jolivet) and from core repertoire to rarities. ü The 78 rpm era recordings find here their first original complete edition and they include numerous official premieres on CD. ü Roussel’s Suite in F recoreded for Erato is released here for the first time on CD ü The Berlioz Symphonie fantastique with the Orchestre de Paris was recorded a few days before the first concert of the orchestra: the first notes ever played by the Orchestre de Paris. Jean-Charles Hoffelé, in his note for the boxset, sums up Munch’s style thus: “… his frenetic rhythms, his enormously varied palette of intense colours … his unerring feeling for a crescendo, all the subtle accents and phrasing that make his performances speak directly to the audience, and above all an irrepressible sense of movement …”