This set brings together Barbirolli’s commercial recordings of Beethoven with the Hallé Orchestra made between 1947 and 1959.

Barbirolli studied, played and conducted the works of Beethoven throughout his long career. As a young pupil he studied, in his spare time, the scores of Beethoven symphonies and string quartets and also the works of Bach, Haydn and others. By the age of twelve he had played cello in all the Beethoven string quartets – ‘a liberal education in itself’, as he was to say later.

His early musical upbringing was a classical one and later, in his teens and early twenties, this ‘classical education’ was to be enriched and extended by his participation in a great deal of chamber music as a cellist, as an orchestral musician, and in conducting his string and chamber orchestras.

Perhaps, temperamentally, he belonged to the romantic tradition – his name will always be associated with composers such as Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Puccini and Verdi, whose works he interpreted so well and felt so deeply – but he also championed the works of Beethoven and conducted them frequently throughout and, indeed, to the very end of his life.

Contents:
CD 1
- Overture ‘Leonora No.3’ Op.72a
Recorded: April 1959 Free Trade Hall, Manchester (Stereo)

- Symphony No.1 in C major, Op.21
Recorded: 1 January 1958 Free Trade Hall, Manchester (Stereo)

- Symphony No.8 in F major, Op.93
Recorded: 1 January 1958 Free Trade Hall, Manchester (Stereo)

- Overture ‘Egmont’, Op.84, from the Music to Goethe’s tragedy
Recorded: 28 April 1949 Abbey Road, No.1 Studio (Mono)

CD 2
- Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.5 in E flat major, Op.73 ‘Emperor’
Mindru Katz (piano)
Recorded: April 1959 Free Trade Hall, Manchester (Stereo)

- Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op.67
Recorded: 19 May 1947 Abbey Road, No.1 Studio (Mono)