Classical: The Compact Collection

Rob Cowan on the Week's CD Releases

SEVENTY-TWO years on and Wagner's "Bayreuth bells", the ones designed specifically for use in Parsifal and that were melted down for the Nazi war effort, still set up the most unbelievable din. Their low-pitch, sonorous clanging crowns the First-Act "Transformation Music" on an amazingly vivid 1927 Bayreuth Festival recording conducted by Karl Muck. Naxos include it as part of a two-CD "historical" Parsifal collection, and Preiser Records has reissued the same imperious performance on a single full-price CD, together with the other Wagner "bleeding chunks" that filled the original 78 album.

Both defy belief in terms of sound, but by filling their second disc with Muck's incandescent 1928 Berlin Parsifal's Third Act, Naxos plays the winning hand.

A rush of important archive releases temporarily upstages the new, lead by the BBC, whose on-going "Legends" have reached an all-time high with fabulous releases featuring Toscanini, Richter and the Oistrakhs. Toscanini's live 1940 New York account of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" (on Music & Arts) always struck me as the most powerful and compelling ever recorded, but a newly issued BBC Symphony broadcast from the previous year is stronger still - and rather better balanced.

Toscanini's visionary musicianship makes for a wondrous statement of the "Credo", holding fast to structure while Beethoven explores the outer reaches of his imagination. The "Gloria" is enlivening (though never rushed) and the "Benedictus" generously paced. The singing is mostly fabulous, with Zinka Milanov soaring high at the least prompt and a lyrical Koloman von Pataky upstaging Bjorling on the 1940 set. There are fine fill-ups (Beethoven's 7th, Mozart 35, Cherubini's Anacreon), but it is the "Missa" that is truly unmissable.

Unissued Sviatoslav Richter recordings are a good deal less rare than unissued Toscanini, but a coupling of 1960s Richter broadcasts from The Maltings and the Royal Festival Hall extends our knowledge of this great pianist with ethereal Debussy (all of the Preludes bar two) and resolute Chopin. You can compare two very different versions of the "Revolutionary" Study, the first brilliant but cold, the second fervidly intense. There's the aural glitter of Debussy's L'Isle joyeuse, piquantly phrased Chopin Mazurkas and a good deal more. The mood is electric and the sound captures it well.

Which leaves Richter's much-loved compatriot David Oistrakh, eloquent and poised both as a violinist and a violist, and captured live at the Royal Albert Hall in 1963 with his violinist-son Igor and the Moscow Philharmonic in Mozart's heart-rending E flat Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. Previous to Mozart, David conducts Menuhin in a noble account of Beethoven's Violin Concerto.

Parsifal/Muck Naxos 8.110049-50 (two discs) Wagner Parsifal/Muck, etc Preiser 90393 Beethoven, etc/Toscanini BBC BBCL 4016-2 (two discs)

Debussy, etc/Richter BBC BBCL 4021-2 (two discs) Mozart, Beethoven/Oistrakh, Menuhin BBC BBCL 4019-2.