Concentration on faithfulness to the work in hand is often identified as Karl Böhm’s outstanding characteristic: his mode of conducting is said to embody the art of the conscientious presentation of the work and the subordination of his own personality to what the music itself has to say.

In reality, he was far from being a “conductor without qualities”, and this is illustrated particularly clearly in his interpretation of the Symphony No. 1 by Johannes Brahms. Partnered by the Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Karl Böhm takes up this challenge with great decisiveness, charging the work with a youthfully zestful expressivity and driving it single-mindedly on towards the finale, not without taking the occasional surprising liberty with the score. It is passionate and full of romantic urgency.

In the same year (1963) he was joined by the Romanian-born violinist Lola Bobesco to perform, with captivating spontaneity, the Violin Concerto No. 5 by Henri Vieuxtemps, the most important composer of the Franco-Belgian violin school.