Much the most moving item in this wide-ranging historic collection is one that, curiously, is not even listed on the cover of the DVD in question, a half-hour film of Stravinsky conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra in his Firebird music. That was in September 1965 on his last visit to England, and it comes merely as a ‘bonus’ on the Igor Markevitch DVD. I will cherish that even more than the 80 minutes preceding it; director Brain Large lets us see every muscle in the composer’s grimly intense face – until the triumphant brass chords of the coda, when he breaks into a flicker of a smile, before beaming broadly as he takes his bow to a standing ovation. That he was just as moved as his listeners is obvious indeed.

Markevitch as conductor provides an extreme contrast. Even when he inspires passionate playing in Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and the Tristan Prelude and Liebestod, the look on his face is of a grimly impassive professor. After a warmly idiomatic reading of Shostakovich’s First Symphony, the Symphony of Psalms here has some passionate moments but also patches of rough ensemble, and the chorus is not always secure. None of the French recordings match the BBC recording of Stravinsky in sound.

The film of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with Karajan and the Orchestre de Paris in 1970 and never published before, is another matter. Unlike the other films in this batch, it is shot in colour, with images sharply focused against a bright background of Indian red. Here, too, you have an impassive-looking conductor, one who closes his eyes while he conducts; but unlike Markevitch, whose appearance hardly reflects his interpretation, Karajan lets you see as well as hear every nuance in a characteristically moulded performance. His approach might seem self-indulgent, except that from first to last he generates the highest voltage of electricity. As Richard Osborne points out in his note, Karajan’s Paris period may have been brief, but, even more than his commercial recordings, this film makes it quite clear what he was achieving with this recently founded prestigious French orchestra.

Le Corsaire with Barbirolli is an enjoyable if hardly generous bonus. Both expression and body language reflects the passionate warmth of his response to Berlioz.

It is good, too, to be reminded of the young Giulini, when the fire still burned brightly. The Mussorgsky Pictures, in Ravel’s orchestration, a favourite showpiece of his, was recorded in Watford Town Hall with the Philharmonia in March 1964 only days before Walter Legge tried to disband the great orchestra he had founded; the opening suggests an untypical heaviness of spirit, which evaporates as the performance progresses, though the television sound lacks brilliance. Giulini hypnotises the players (by this time reconstituted as the New Philharmonia) with his deeply involved, often agonised facial expressions. If the reading of the Mozart G minor Symphony nowadays seems to belong to another age with its romantically moulded Andante (and no first movement exposition repeat), it is a civilised account. The Falla brings music-making of quite a different order, daring and colourful, with Giulini seeming to shout or sing at the climax of the final dance.

The bonus track takes us back to the 1950 Edinburgh Festival when Guido Cantelli rehearsed the Orchestra of La Scala in Rossini’s Semiramide Overture. This is a tantalising clip of less than four minutes. No verbal instruction from the then newly risen, star among Italian conductors, yet the magnetism which so impressed the music world is clear enough.