Sandor Vegh Conducts (Box) [CD]

Sándor Végh, the "arch musician", was one of those few conductors who possessed that musical je ne sais quoi. Whatever he touched - especially with his Salzburg Camerata: it was always musical, light, exciting. Showing that in music the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that phrasing and sparkle go a long way, he made even the least of Mozart's Gebrauchsmusik sound like works of flaming genius. This box proves, if it needed proving, that these skills applied to other music, too: from the rest of the First Viennese School to the Second Viennese School and beyond. His Schubert Symphonies are pure classical joy; his Transfigured Night late-romantic gorgeousness-become-manifest; his Bartók an idiomatically simpatico dreamboat.