The SWR Classic four-cd set Hans Rosbaud Conducts French Music [SWR19115/4-CDs] features the late Austrian maestro Hans Rosbaud conducting the Sinfonieorchester des Südwestrundfunks in French music by Debussy, Honegger, Ibert, Jarre, Messiaen, Mihalovici, Milhaud, Ravel, and Roussel.

I could not listen to all 47 tracks and the nearly three hours of music I would so much have wanted o to enjoy but picking and choosing as if from a moveable feast I took in Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Nuages, Fêtes, Jeux, and La mer. Throughout these five selections Rosbaud and his German musicians excel in Debussy’s quintessentially French music.

In another multiple CD set, Schubert’s complete symphonies can be heard on the BIS 4-CD set Schubert: The Symphonies [BIS-2514SACD]. With Thomas Dausgaard leading the Swedish Chamber Orchestra these recordings also include some shorter orchestral works, among them the Rosamunde Incidental MThe Symphonies nos. 1 through 6 preceded numerically and chronologically the much better-known 8th and 9^th ‘Great C major’ and the ‘Unfinished.’

Composed between 1813 and 1818, while Schubert was in his twenties, they are fresh, imaginative, inspired, inexhaustibly melodic youthful works in which Dausgaard leads the Swedish Chamber Orchestra with joyful perfection. I listened to at least one movement from each of the eight works and found every one – both the familiar and the just discovered – a huge source of pleasure.

Rafael de Acha © 2022