Since his death at the age of 95 almost forty years ago, the international appreciation of the art of Leopold Stokowski has undergone a transformation, to the point where he is now widely regarded as having been one of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century, with a discography spanning almost 60 years, for over 25 of those years as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He returned to that orchestra in 1960 for a series of concerts, from which come these magnificent performances of Brahms's First Symphony and Stokowski's own purely orchestral symphonic synthesis of Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde'. The recording quality is outstanding, and the performances are suffused with a lifetime's understanding of this great music played by a great orchestra.

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