Although Karajan recorded the last three symphonies many times, he did not turn to the first three until the end of the 1970s. No doubt the reason these early symphonies sound so fresh is because the Berlin orchestra was not over-familiar with them – this belied by the sheer refinement of the orchestral playing. Recorded at the Philharmonie between October 1975 and February 1979, Karajan’s Berliner Philharmoniker cycle is presented on Blu-ray Audio disc with their Slavonic March and the Capriccio italien, both recorded in Jesus-Christus-Kirche in October 1966. “Peerless playing from the Berlin Philharmonic.” THE PENGUIN STEREO RECORD GUIDE “[…] [this] catches conductor and orchestra on fire, with an expressive heat rivalled by their Schumann anda Schoenberg from the same period […]the recording explodes common assumptions about the saturated sound of the BPO under Karajan at his pomp, and the effect of the Andante cantabile relies at least as much on carefully deployed restraint as the animal intensity of the string section when given its head.” GRAMOPHONE on Symphony 8, 2016 “Karajan gives his finest interpretations both in the early and the late symphonies.” BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE, 2008.