The Compact Collection: Clifford Curzon, Georg Solti, Arthur Grumiaux

Rob Cowan on the best classical CD releases

In all my years of listening, I have never encountered finer Mozart playing than on Sir Clifford Curzon's previously unreleased 1964 Decca recording of the A major Piano Concerto, K488. Beam up 4'28" into the first movement, when the Vienna Philharmonic strings usher in one of Mozart's most ravishing themes, and Curzon responds with a perfectly sculpted embellishment. How come this jewel has remained buried in the vaults for so long? The conductor is George Szell, himself a fine pianist, and the coupling, an equally rapt B flat Concerto, K595, also a first-ever release. It's the last disc in a four-CD all-Curzon collection, tantalisingly announced as Volume I, and included as part of Decca's newly launched limited-edition Original Masters series (473 116-2).

The remaining items are scarcely less remarkable: solo Schubert (Four Impromptus D935, D major Sonata D850), inwardly searching but with infinite reserves of charm; and two further collaborations with Szell, both recorded in London, Beethoven's Emperor and Tchaikovsky's First Concerto. The third disc is an enterprising mix of Franck, Litolff, De Falla and Alan Rawsthorne, his pleasantly discursive Second Piano Concerto, premiered by Curzon in 1951 and recorded during the same year. Never one to indulge in shallow display, Curzon would habitually furrow away beneath the music's surface. Whether in Mozart's A major Adagio, Tchaikovsky's childlike Andantino, or the tearful con moto of Schubert's Sonata, you sense that all things musical are being considered at the deepest possible level.

Another collection in this excellent series is devoted to the "first recordings as pianist and conductor" by Sir Georg Solti (473 127-2, four discs). Two collaborations with older violinists are particularly revealing. The first, a product of the late Forties, finds Solti partnering Georg Kulenkampff, a superb player who, earlier, as an elevated Aryan, had been touted by the same political regime that forced the other young Georg into exile. Wonderful how great art – in this case Brahms's three violin sonatas and the Beethoven Kreutzer – can facilitate a symbolic reconciliation, Kulenkampff full of warmth but with a steely backbone, Solti the same agile personality we know so well from his work on the rostrum.

The other partnership finds Solti and the LPO providing a disciplined orchestral framework for the Russian-born veteran, Mischa Elman, whose free-spirited rhapsodising might otherwise have reduced Beethoven's Violin Concerto to series of vaguely related gestures. Though poles apart as interpreters, Solti and Elman somehow manage to meet on common ground.

Other rarities in this admirable Solti Original Masters collection include Munich recordings of Kodaly's Hary Janos Suite, and just under half of Richard Strauss's Elektra, with Christel Goltz in the title role. Interesting to encounter Solti's dynamism away from the theatrical stereophony of his later complete Elektra, though Goltz is no match for Birgit Nilsson. Schubert's Fifth Symphony, with the Israel Philharmonic, has a tender heart beating beneath a rustic surface, and there's some Bartok, a ferociously energetic Dance Suite and a rather sloppy Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the one item I could have done without. Solti's Italian Symphony with the Israel Phil might have been preferable, or the Mozart Sonata (K454) he recorded with Kulenkampff. But before I run out of space, I would urge you to also try Decca's Arthur Grumiaux collection, which includes his first recordings of Mozart's violin concertos and a Turkish Concerto to die for (473 104-2, five discs).