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The great Russian conductor Evgeny Svetlanov (1928-2002) was born in Moscow. He became Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi Ballet (1963-1965) and the USSR Symphony Orchestra (1965-2000) and in later years held positions with the Swedish Radio Symphony

Orchestra and Het Residentie in the Netherlands. He was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the LSO in 1979. He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1975.

These live recordings are issued for the first time on CD.

The performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.1 in April 2002 with the BBCSO was the last concert he gave in London before his death two months later. Svetlanov’s studio-made Tchaikovsky recordings with the USSR Symphony Orchestra for Melodiya in the 1960s were the cornerstones of the catalogue at the time and he brings an unqualified authority to the Barbican concert recorded here.

Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet (1945) was a comparative rarity for Svetlanov but given his earlier position with the Bolshoi, he had a unique understanding of ballet conducting. It is a superbly detailed and imaginative account with the Philharmonia on tremendous form.

The digital sound recorded in the Barbican for both performances is totally natural and warm.

This 2-CD set marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970) and features recordings ranging from boy cellist in 1911 to international conductor 1969 – in both ‘live’ and studio recordings. John Barbirolli was born in Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, on 2 December 1899, a Cockney as he proudly boasted. Or, to be accurate, Giovanni Battista Barbirolli was born, son of an Italian émigré violinist and his French wife. English-born with Italo-French parentage – a wonderful pedigree for a musician. And so it proved, for he conducted Elgar, Verdi and Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Puccini and Ravel, with equal sensitivity and perception and intuition. This album of recordings forms a kind of musical biography; and Michael Kennedy’s notes (with many rare photos) trace that life alongside the recordings. A special bonus is the 1947 Austrian Radio recording of two works, Weber’s Euryanthe overture and Delius’s Walk to the Paradise Garden, from the Salzburg Festival concert on 20 August at which he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. Was this, Michael Kenneday asks, the first time this orchestra had played the Delius? Two rare mementos of the New York period are included in this album. Anthony Collins had long been a friend of Barbirolli (they played in the LSO together) and worked in the USA from 1936 to 1945 and his Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, based on the two comic characters in Twelfth Night, is an example of his overlooked talent. Another composer almost forgotten today is the Czech-born Jaromir Weinberger whose opera Schwanda the Bagpiper enjoyed inter-war popularity. His Christmas for organ and orchestra was composed in 1929. In 1939 he dedicated his Variations and Fugue on an old English tune, ‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree’ to Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic.

Heifetz’s series of arrangements and transcriptions for violin and piano reveal just how tasteful and refined a musician he was. Crafted with precision, and played with passion, they are alive with his stylistic awareness. Whether in his Rachmaninov transcriptions or in Robert Russell Bennett’s A Song Sonata, Heifetz lavished equal care on these gems and they enriched his concert programmes. They also proved hugely popular on disc – thirteen pieces come from a 1960 LP famously called ‘Heifetz’ – and their variety, virtuosity and sheer beauty remain imperishable examples of the art of the violin.

Mark Obert-Thorn, reissue producer and audio restoration engineer

In a second audite production Igor Markevitch leads works that remained a substantial challenge for any orchestra in the 1950s. Markevitch was considered the most accomplished conductor of The Rite at the time for he, like no other, was able to master the rhythmical and technical complexities of this score. A special relationship with the young RIAS Symphony Orchestra is also demonstrated by the immaculate, virtuoso interpretations of Daphnis et Chloé and Honegger's Fifth Symphony, which Markevitch introduced to Berlin, less than a year after its world-première in Boston.

The iconic Igor Stravinsky conducting his own works ‘live’ is a major event, and the 1958 gala event was no exception.

‘Music and Musicians’ wrote “even Stravinsky, apostle of clarity, could not complain of the brilliance of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s attack or clean and faultless line of its phrasing. Seized as it was on this night with a sense of occasion, it can play like a band of angels.”

Both the ballet scores, ‘Agon’ and ‘Apollo’ (formerly named ‘Apollon Musagète), were recorded by Stravinsky in the studio after their respective premieres in 1957 and 1950, and then again in the 1960s. The ‘Symphony in 3 Movements’ was first recorded in the studio by Stravinsky in 1946.

There are some European air-checks of ‘Agon’ and ‘Apollo’ but the BBC’s own master tapes are of superb quality.

Stravinsky concluded the concert with three excerpts from the 1945 ‘Firebird’, but timing only permitted the Finale to be included here.