Before Michael Tilson-Thomas took up the principal conductorship of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1988, he recorded all of Beethoven’s symphonies with the English Chamber Orchestra, rounding off the cycle with a performance of the “Eroica” featuring New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s. A Gramophone reviewer wrote in 1985 that “Tilson Thomas’s ‘chamber versions’ … always throw new light on the strings/wind balance, giving us something closer to what Beethoven expected than we are used to … You can expect details to stand out which you had not noticed before”, while another, writing in 1987 on the sound of the Abbey Road Studio No. 1 recordings, found “plenty of weight and power … bright and immediate with a fine feeling of presence” and declared the Ninth “a splendid culmination to Tilson Thomas’s cycle”. The six CDs of this first release in a single box also contain the conductor’s London recordings of Beethoven overtures, late choral works and the concert aria Ah! Perfido with soprano Eva Marton.

Complete Symphonies/ 12 Contredanses/Ah Perfido/Konig Stephan/Opferlied/Bundeslied/Elegischer Gesang/Meerestille & Gluckliche Fahrt