Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951) is usually held up as a representative of the Romantic, 19th-century school of conducting, whose adherents supposedly ignore the score while giving wildly subjective performances. These Brahms recordings from the ’30s and ’40s make nonsense out of that notion. Yes, there’s plenty of rubato, and the strings play with liberal portamento. But what stands out in these performances is how natural Mengelberg’s tempos seem, and how coherent they make the structure of individual movements. The first movement of the Fourth Symphony shows how varying the speed can make the musical argument clear. Only in the Tragic Overture, which was recorded in 1942, do the tempos seem disproportionate, but the result really gets at the work’s pathos. The Second and Fourth Symphonies were also recorded during the war, and perhaps that’s what gives them their extraordinary force. The Second — usually thought to be Brahms’s most optimistic symphony — gets an urgent, driven reading, almost at the expense of its lyrical side.

The other trademark of Mengelberg’s performances is the extraordinary sound of the Concertgebouw, particularly the strings, which have a sweetness that no other orchestra of the time could match. Just listen to the way the violins sing their big theme in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, or the bloom the cellos give to the famous lullaby melody in the Second. No doubt the Concertgebouw acoustic had a lot to do with the orchestra’s sound, which can be heard clearly thanks to Ward Marston’s outstanding transfers. There’s almost no surface noise and only a hint of distortion at high levels. Throw in Naxos’s budget price and you’ve got an extraordinary bargain here.