Of Britain’s baton-wielding knights, Sir Eugene Goossens is not as well known as some of his contemporaries, yet he was highly regarded and left a creditable legacy of recordings, often of repertoire which at the time was less well known than it is now, as was the case with “Manfred” in 1959. Goossens gave a detailed reading, and the Everest engineers have captured the weight and depth of tone of that he drew from the London Symphony orchestra in a recording that bears up very well after more than 60 years. The performance is definitely worth having, but I have deducted one star because there are two cuts in this performance. About 4 or 5 minutes of the development in the first movement are cut, and the fugato section in the finale has also been skipped. At least Goossens did leave Tchaikovsky’s coda with its harmonium solo intact.
