From 78 to stereo, this is Sir Malcolm Sargent’s Decca legacy reissued complete, including several recordings new to CD.

Sargent’s broad repertoire and warm rapport with audiences made him easy to underestimate. Yet Schnabel and Toscanini, among other celebrated foreign musicians, held him in the highest regard. This new Eloquence collection of the conductor’s Decca recordings should help modern listeners to understand and share Schnabel’s admiration.

These 78-era sessions included symphonies by Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert as well as overtures by Rossini and Suppé, several of them never reissued until now. They reveal what a direct and unmannered interpreter Sargent could be in canon repertoire, coaching orchestras to achieve the highest technical standards.

Sargent’s concerto sessions with Sir Clifford Curzon (in Rawsthorne), Max Rostal (Bartók), Ida Haendel (Mendelssohn) and Ruggero Ricci (Tchaikovsky and Dvořák) bear out his reputation as a sympathetic accompanist. ‘Messiah and Mikado’ was how the conductor summed up his strengths in the eyes of the wider public: the box includes rare 1946 recordings of Handel arias and choruses featuring Kathleen Ferrier, as well as a live 1949 recording of Sargent accompanying her in his own orchestration of Brahms’s Four Serious Songs.

Having comprehensively covered the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan for HMV, Sargent remade both The Yeomen of the Guard and Princess Ida for Decca in 1964-65. These records movingly document the final chapter in the conductor’s career-long affinity with G&S, now leading the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and first-rate casts which include Elizabeth Harwood and Donald Adams in the principal roles of both works. Sargent was a conductor for all seasons, and this Eloquence box takes the measure of him.

‘Sir Malcolm secures a performance that is both careful and enthusiastic; the tempi are sensible, the solos are beautifully played and the recording is well managed.’ – The Record Guide (Elgar: Enigma Variations)

‘Ricci’s performance is very fine and musicianly, and the recorded tone is excellent.’ – The Record Guide, 1955 (Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto)

‘Strongly recommended ... Clifford Curzon delivers the solo with imperturbable authority.’ – The Record Guide, 1955 (Rawsthorne: Piano Concerto no.2)

‘Sargent has secured a performance full of vigour and energy... excellently played.’ – Gramophone, July 1945 (Beethoven: Symphony no.5)

‘Sargent gives a brilliant performance, which gives due emphasis to the long- drawn melodies of Berlioz.’ – Gramophone, July 1947 (Berlioz: Béatrice et Bénédict, Overture)

‘I like the style, and the recording rises to the needs of the not over-scored music with perfect aptness.’ – Gramophone, April 1948 (Grieg: Lyric Suite)

‘Ferrier’s generosity of tone and emotion is finely matched to the music ... Sargent gives conviction to his own setting.’ – Gramophone, September 1979 (Brahms: Four Serious Songs)