And anyone who has not heard his recording of the Serenade in a resplendent Cherman accent (and with equal-tempered horn in the Prologue and Epilogue) should seek out the recording post haste. Berlin Classics. It's a joy.

Ze splentour fallss on castle vallss.

Re the Shreier: it's a great pity that a 'lenkvidge coech' was not available, because there are some great things in the performance, once you get round the horn oddity. Perhaps not quite so obviously at sea linguistically with Les Illuminations. The conductor is Herbert Kegel, by the way, an East German of huge ability who directed highly idiomatic performances of much C20th music, championing Stravinsky, Bartok, Orff (the serious works), Nono, Schoenberg, Mahler, Britten and Shostakovich among others, although his range covered pretty much the whole of the standard repertoire equally well. The discs seem a bit mixed up in the listing, but here's an inexpensive way to discover his art: Carmina Burana, the War Requiem, Moses und Aaron and Gurrelieder just a few of the delights in this 15 disc set.

Possibly there to pull in a few extra innocents, in which case, they'll have a shock or two when it comes to the rest of the music .

I owe my knowledge of this set to CDM and, I rather believe, the sage of Bracknell, who pointed me in the correct direction for finding it. And I still haven't got round to ordering it myself, though a copy will slog its way across the channel then the border one day, I'm sure. Kegel really is one of those rare conductors with an instinct for the right touch and sound in virtually everything he conducts, it seems to me: a sort of East German Mackerras, perhaps.