Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 1, Op. 138

Blazing and saturated sound - of the aptly-described ' gold brick' variety - characterises these celebrated performances of eight of Beethoven's best-loved overtures. All the favourites are there and the recordings have been stunningly remastered for this release.

Sylvain Cambreling has appeared with the world’s leading orchestras, including the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic.

Here he brings his wealth of experience to Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony.

2010/11 was his farewell season as chief conductor of this orchestra.

These remastered seventies recordings bring together all the Beethoven overtures. Most of the works are associated with stage works. These included those for the dramas Coriolan, Egmont, King Stephen and the Ruins of Athens, as well as the overture for the ballet music The Creatures of Prometheus. Nameday and The Consecration of the House were written more for representative occasions.

Noted for the heroic quality of his interpretations, in which a loving attention to detail, a remarkable understanding of architectural structure and a keen sense of musical impetus generated compellingly lucid performances, Otto Klemperer was a conductor whose complex artistry combined immense subtlety and powerful directness.

Nowhere was this more evident than in his authoritative readings of Beethoven’s music. The works on this disc, originally issued during the mid-1950s by Columbia and restored by award-winning audio engineer Mark Obert-Thorn, bring pinnacles of Klemperer’s legendary achievement to a new generation of listeners with a remarkable immediacy worthy of the master conductor.

“Otto Klemperer's mono recordings of Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 3, 5, and 7 are historic in several senses. Not only are they terrific performances by themselves, but they also launched the conductor on the magnificent Indian summer of his career, a period that saw him acclaimed as the greatest interpreter of the basic German repertoire for much of the 1950s and '60s. Klemperer always conducted a sensational Eroica.” Classics Today