A spate of re-releases suggests that Wolfgang Sawallisch was no B-lister

It’s clearance-sale time for the great classical labels of the 20th century. As streaming platforms drain the remaining value out of once-prestigious recorded catalogues, even B-listers are being pulled up from the vaults and remastered for one last re-release. Eleven-disc Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos edition? Walter Weller’s complete Decca recordings? Now’s your chance: everything must go!

The Bavarian conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, who died in 2013, was never exactly B-list. His name always commanded respect. But in the golden age of LP collecting he was regarded as a safe pair of hands rather than a blue-chip name. Listening to a mini spate of Sawallisch re-releases suggests that we underrated him. His Schumann symphonies are surely the best on record, and a live Munich recording of Mendelssohn’s Elijah from 1984 offers a glimpse into a living tradition – a conductor and performers speaking a shared musical language as natives. But this new remastering of Schubert’s Unfinished and Mendelssohn’s Italian probably tells you all you need to know. The performances date from 1959-60, around the time that Sawallisch – typically – tied his destiny to Vienna’s orchestral also-rans, the Symphony Orchestra, rather than the show ponies up the Ringstrasse at the Philharmonic. The unforced depth of tone in the Schubert, and the expressive weight in its tragic climaxes; the contrast between the glowing orchestral colours of the Mendelssohn and Sawallisch’s exultant forward momentum… well, see what you think. And then marvel that there was ever a time when we took conducting like this for granted.