The complete list of recordings by Hans Rosbaud, published in 1992, runs to an astonishing 854 items. True, most of them are tapes of radio broadcasts, but even the 95 recordings made for commercial disc contain a far wider range of memorable performances than a five-disc album can contain. As far as Rosbaud’s DG repertory is concerned, there’s nothing like the excellent Bruckner and Mahler interpretations from 1959 (available as a Vox Box, 12/97), and no evidence of his gifts as an avant-garde specialist of the kind that Col Legno’s Boulez releases display (5/01). All the more important, then, to point out that this new set is thoroughly worthwhile, and several of the recordings included are certainly among his very best.The most expendable is probably the earliest – Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, boxily recorded in 1948 – though even this brings out the work’s genuine strengths, never over-indulging the tear-jerking histrionics. As Rosbaud’s readings of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven reveal, he had the knack of conveying genuine vitality and substance while shunning exaggeration and over-pointing. His tempi for Haydn’s minuets may be on the stately side by current standards, and the rather plushy sound of these remasterings won’t be to all tastes; but this is Haydn with an abundance of humour and charm. I also liked the freshness and warmth of the Mozart K218 Violin Concerto with Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and even a 1961 Concertgebouw Emperor with Robert Casadesus which seems more efficient than inspired never sinks into the merely mechanical.

The undoubted star turn here is the Concertgebouw Petrushka, recorded in 1962, the last year of Rosbaud’s life. At the right volume level (a bit higher than for most of the other works in the set) this offers as much colourful detail as the best recent versions, allied to a stunningly immediate feeling for the (melo)drama. It’s also superbly played. In comparison, the Baden-Baden recording of Agon, made in 1957 when the work was fairly new, is a bit more effortful, but still marvellously responsive to the score’s sheer strangeness of texture and form, as Stravinsky reinvented himself for the ‘post-tonal’ age.

Rosbaud was in his element with the strongly contrasted responses to Mahler found in the two Op 6 sets of orchestral pieces by Berg and Webern. The Webern is particularly fine, its predominantly delicate scoring offering less of a challenge to recording techniques in 1957. In Berg’s Op 6 there’s a certain artificiality in the way that soft instruments – the celesta, for example – achieve such remarkable prominence within the often turbulent, heavily orchestrated textures. Rather better in purely technical terms are the Sibelius recordings from the same year, made in Berlin. Not only do these manage the miracle of making one listen to Finlandia and the Karelia Suite as if for the first time – the Berlin brass in those days was world-beating – but there’s a rapt, absorbing account of Tapiola which must surely rank with the very best. Indeed, if the recording itself had a wider dynamic range it would be hard to argue that there was anything better.

Finally, DG puts us in its debt by reissuing for the first time since LP days two works by the now largely forgotten Boris Blacher. Both sparkle delightfully: Concertante Musik is a bit like German Milhaud, while the Second Piano Concerto sounds surprisingly similar to recent Ligeti in its witty play with scale patterns and shifting metres. As with most of these recordings the sound quality is excellent, natural and well-balanced – something one can’t always say about the newest releases.