Fischer… offers a sparkling performance of the popular overture to Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers, and his account of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is impressive, with the major-mode episodes of the famous second movement warm and glowing, and the Dionysiac finale tremendously exciting.

Fischer and his players romp through the finale like devils possessed, pausing only when strings wrestle for supremacy.

As a totality, the disc is consequently bitty, but the performance of the Seventh ranks, without question, among the greatest ever recorded. With the Budapest Festival Orchestra playing as if their lives depended on it, it's superbly articulated, thrillingly elated and emotionally exhausting. Weber, on first hearing the work, wondered whether its composer was insane, and for once you understand why. Utterly compelling.