"Obert-Thorn, of course, has been a renowned practitioner in the refurbishment of historical recordings for decades. His efforts here are eminently successful, and very worthwhile, since the performances on this release are uniformly excellent" - Fanfare on Vol. 1

After the deserved success of our previous volume of Fabien Sevitzky's recordings with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra we return for a second helping of excellent Russian and (mainly) Russian-American music from the lesser-known nephew of Serge Koussevitzy. If you don't know Sevitzky yet, perhaps you should!

"Fabien Sevitzky appears to have been an excellent conductor, eminently deserving of renewed attention. In these performances he imposes tight orchestral discipline and firm tempos, but he also generates rhythmic vitality, urgent momentum, and dramatic excitement. The Indianapolis Symphony shows itself to have been a very fine ensemble in this era." - Fanfare

• GLAZUNOV From the Middle Ages
  

• DUBENSKY Stephen Foster ∙ Fugue for 18 Violins
  

• CESANA Negro Heaven
  

• GERSHWIN-BENNETT Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture

"Horenstein keeps it sounding genuine with the unusual sense of definition and purpose he gives to the pirouetting rhythms. Throughout, there's a distinctively serpentine sense of legato, the likes of which haven't been heard since that eccentric 1920s Oskar Fried recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. The difference with Horenstein is that it works."

Jascha Horenstein's Vox recordings of these Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra sound magnificent in these new Pristine XR remasters, stripping away the thin and harsh sound to reveal a full and fabulous orchestral bloom in a stunning transformation.

"What impresses is not any great dramatic moment, but the flowing cohesiveness, the incessant movement of the whole, with every instrumental gesture such as the striding horns in the third movement, or the clucking bassoons in the transition to the Finale, neatly in place."

• BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5
  
• BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 6 'Pastoral'

"Zinka Milanov, who had been on the Met strength since 1937 and continued to be so until 1966, must be counted one of the great Verdi sopranos of the 20th century. Here, at age 34, she is at her freshest and most radiant. Jussi [Björling] is in marvellous shape. Riccardo, more than perhaps any other Verdi role, needs lightness and elegance, paired with brilliance ... he is superb: lyrical, warm and impassioned" - MusicWeb International

If fortune had smiled on us we would have two very good recordings of Jussi Björling in Un Ballo in Maschera. He was scheduled to appear in the 1954 radio broadcast with Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra but had to pull out due to laryngitis. Illness also forced him to pull out of the Decca recording in Rome in the summer of 1960 opposite Birgit Nilsson. Just a few months later he was dead. Opera fans were thus denied the chance to hear Jussi Björling in one of his signature roles. The Decca recording in particular would have captured him in excellent stereo.

Yet all is not lost. This broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in December 1940 captures Björling at his youthful best, not yet 30 years old, singing with all the passion one could want in a live performance.