He has fallen somewhat into obscurity. Yet in the 1950s and 1960s, André Cluytens was regarded, alongside his older colleagues Charles Münch and Ernest Ansermet and the slightly younger Jean Martinon, as the foremost interpreter of the French repertoire. Even so, he was by no means a “specialist”. On the contrary, the breadth of his repertoire and his curiosity for unfamiliar works were hallmarks of Cluytens’s artistry. In 1955, he became the first French conductor to appear at Bayreuth (long before Pierre Boulez). Between 1957 and 1960, he even pre-empted Herbert von Karajan by making the Berlin Philharmonic’s first complete recording of the Beethoven symphonies.

Two live recordings from the Internationale Musikfestwochen Luzern (today’s Lucerne Festival), released here for the first time, pay tribute to the Belgian-born conductor who made France his adopted home. In the summer of 1954, Cluytens drew a remarkable range of colours and moods from César Franck’s Symphony in D minor at the helm of the Philharmonia Orchestra, shaping its unsentimental tempos into a compelling symphonic drama. He was also joined by the then 23-year-old violinist Igor Oistrakh, who performed Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto, one of the signature works of his father and teacher David Oistrakh. His interpretation combines breathtaking precision with an idiomatic shaping of the lyrical themes and features a substantial solo cadenza of his own, surpassing not only Khachaturian’s original but also the cadenza customarily performed by his father in terms of technical demands.

The 32-page booklet in three languages provides a portrait of the conductor written by Michael Struck-Schloen and also features photos from the festival archive, published here for the first time.