Jascha Horenstein - Rathaus: Horenstein conducts Rathaus, Korngold and Schreker (2015)

These three rare recordings offer a fascinating insight into Horenstein's musical friends and contemporaries: each composer, in his own way, was close to the conductor's heart. The main item, Rathaus's Symphony No. 3, was receiving its world première in an audience-free BBC studio, some 13 years after it was completed, and two years after the composer's death. The Schreker was another BBC recording, this time from a live concert at Maida Vale. Finally, the Korngold was recorded in stereo by Decca engineer Kenneth Wilkinson and produced by the composer's son, George Korngold, during spare time following a 1965 Reader's Digest session with the Royal Philharmonic.

There is considerable variation in sound quality: the 1965 stereo Korngold is by far the best, and we're grateful to the RPO for permission to release it here in light of considerable confusion over copyright ownership. The other two works were transcribed at some point from disc sources unknown; the Rathaus is the better of the two, with a wider tonal and dynamic range, while the top end is somewhat limited on the Schreker, though both have enormously improved by XR remastering over the thin and shrill source material with which I began.