Colin Davis was Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra when these recordings were made between 1975 and 1982. Both were in their prime: Davis in his late 40s and early 50s, and the orchestra at a point where the raw energy it had acquired under Charles Munch (and retained to some extent under Erich Leinsdorf) was being leavened into a smoother, more polished profile by its newly installed Chief Conductor Seiji Ozawa.

Sir Colin Davis

Sir Colin Davis. Portrait supplied

It was also a period when the big European companies started to record American orchestras. The recordings made of the Boston orchestra by Philips and DG (notably with Ozawa, Tilson Thomas, and Davis) captured a particular sound: silken strings, characterful woodwinds, and burnished brass. It was the ‘European’ orchestra of America during this period, as polished as the Concertgebouw, and the lushness of its sonority has not faded with time.

This set contains Davis’s first complete recording of Sibelius’s seven symphonies, and because of the quintessential Boston sound, his strongest. Listen to the warmth and power of the brass in No. 5, and the ideal timing of the coda of that...