Naxos: 8111290

Serge Koussevitzky

This disc restores to the catalogue, after an absence of more than 50 years, Koussevitzky’s second recording of Peter and the Wolf, with Eleanor Roosevelt as narrator. Taped during his last recording sessions on 29th November, 1950, Koussevitzky’s performance of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 is given with an electricity that transcends studio conditions, yet it is not without light, shade and emotional retreat. The final such example of Koussevitzky’s art, which pertinently concludes this disc, is a rapt and expressive account of Grieg’s The Last Spring, notable for the warmth and intensity of the Boston strings.