Thursday 18th April, was Leopold Stokowski's 137th birthday. Two years ago, to mark the conductor's 135th birthday, and the 40th anniversary of his death, we began this short series of three CD releases containing the recordings Stokowski made between 1927 and 1933 of the four Brahms symphonies with The Philadelphia Orchestra.

This week we have two symphonies - the Second and the Fourth - in fabulous new transfers by Mark Obert-Thorn, which fit miraculously onto a single CD without a second to spare, thus completing our edition of the first ever Brahms Symphony Cycle.

"On every level, the orchestral execution and imaginative expression testify to a virtuoso display of American musicianship" - Audiophile Audition

"Admirers of the conductor had better be prepared to dig into their pockets to acquire a vibrant and historically important cycle" - MusicWeb International

"Mr. Obert-Thorn's transfers are amazing!. A remarkable issue in every way!" - Classical CD Review

"The Ninth symphony, given with the assisting quartet of Jarmila Novotna, Kerstin Thorborg, Jan Peerce and Nicola Moscona, was of course the capstone of the occasion, and for everyone involved a towering experience. It is extremely possible that when a performance of such music, as great as the previous one that Mr. Toscanini had given in the same hall, is repeated, its significance is more fully grasped by the listener. It may also be the case that Mr. Toscanini, who never, whatever he attains, stands still as an artist, sculptured more mightily than ever before the shape of the great tone-poem. The result appeared as a further evolution on the part of an artist whose intuition and faith bring him always nearer the very center of Beethoven’s thought. Certainly the last movement surpassed anything the conductor had previously done with the passage. For its ecstasy was cosmic. There was a scene of wild enthusiasm following this performance." - The New York Times, 1939

Toscanini's sixth and final concert of his unique NBC Beethoven Symphony Cycle was broadcast live from Carnegie Hall on 2 December 1939, and he brought the house down with towering performances of the Choral Fantasy (with Ania Dorfmann at the piano) and the Ninth 'Choral' Symphony.

This release completes the series, in new transfers XR-remastered from previously unused source discs, offers unprecedented sound quality from this historic, ground-breaking set of concerts.

Serge Koussevitzky's Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts were not broadcast during the 1948-9 season and all these recordings were ‘bootlegs’ made by the owner of a Boston recording studio who set up a microphone in a ventilating grill on the right of the stage, with a link to his disc-cutting machines. As direct line recordings, albeit with less than optimum microphone placing, they do not suffer from the limitations of an aircheck and offer surprisingly clear and detailed reproduction.

Thanks to Pristine's XR remastering and restoration by Andrew Rose, these recordings now sound almost as good as the day they were performed. With Ruth Posselt as soloist the album begins with the world première of Samuel Barber's revised Violin Concerto, followed by Honegger's Fourth Symphony.

It ends with the Sibelius Symphony No. 7 - in all a fascinating and hugely rewarding album in unexpectedly fine sound quality.