Ten years after the release of the D-minor Concerto under Leonard Bernstein (see No. 3), Gould now issued Volume 1 of the Bach concertos under Vladimir Golschmann. “I want to tell you how much I enjoyed the recording. Please keep in mind always that if no other conductor will go into the studio with you, I will go!”

Herbert von Karajan's 1976 rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "Choral," Op. 125, has had its advocates over the years, and many think this is his best version of the symphony. Even so, others more skeptical may find that this performance is too carefully contrived to show off the Berlin Philharmonic's exceptional chops; that the recording is too fastidiously engineered to pick up every last instrumental passage, important or not; and that the whole package is marketed too pointedly as a "great performance," which it is not.

On February 5, 1960, Ernst von Dohnanyi, one of the great composers and piano virtuosi of the twentieth century, was busily engaged in the New York studios of Everest Records, making recordings of music by Beethoven. Shortly thereafter, he suffered a heart attack, followed by an attack of influenza. Four days later he was dead. Thus, the music he recorded for Everestrepresents the very last performances by this remarkable artist. At eighty-two, an age when most musicians have long since retired, Dohnanyi, as these recordings will attest, still possessed a commanding technique, an enormous tone and an authoritative interpretive style.

Recording technology at the start of the 21st century is probably the best that can be achieved, but a steady flow of historic audiophile reissues demonstrates that the improvement of sound quality has been a decades-long quest, and the first superb efforts are still worth hearing today.

A recording made in September 1972 which has never ranked very highly by admirers of either artist, but i found much to enjoy here. Karajan never seemed particularly engaged as an accompanist for pianists - the main prosecution witness could be his dire conducting for Christoph Eschenbach's DG recording of Beethoven's First Concerto, but he was a firm admirer of Weissenberg and their collaboration works pretty well.