The BBC Legends recording also offers lithe accounts of two overtures and the "Marche Troyenne".
Mr. Langrée opened with Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture No. 2, one of four overtures he composed for prospective new productions of this opera, eventually retitled "Fidelio".
As a preview of coming Met attractions, it opened with two overtures based on music from "Benvenuto Cellini," including "Carnaval Romain".
He emphasises Schumann's lyricism at the expense of his weightier moments, and though the playing is buoyant, this underplays the strength of the two overtures.
To help narrow the field, I laid down a few guidelines: no operas, as they have their own narrative already (though one or two overtures have crept in).
The two overtures, with trumpets and drums, are sheer excitement: that to "Nais" has thrilling syncopations, and "Le Temple de la Gloire" opens by piling magnificence on magnificence as trumpets cap horns and are themselves capped by piccolos, all trilling away.
Here, as part of a welcome three-week minifestival of Mendelssohn, Mr. Masur leads the orchestra in the same symphony, two overtures and the Violin Concerto, with Sheryl Staples, the Philharmonic's superb principal associate concertmaster, as soloist.
He wrote in his Mémoires (1870) how unproductive he was after the rich output of the Paris years, which had brought forth an oratorio, numerous cantatas, two dozen songs, a mass, part of an opera, two overtures, a fantasia on Shakespeare's Tempest, and eight scenes from Goethe's Faust, as well as the Symphonie fantastique.
But by January, 2007, they had been chased out again, by an Ethiopian invasion force that was endorsed by the U.N. and tacitly supported by the U.S. Ambassador Ranneberger told me that he made two overtures to Sharif during this period, and that both had been spurned.
