István Kertész’s early death from a swimming accident in 1973, aged just 44, meant that he performed very little in Salzburg. In the previous decade he had quickly established himself as a first-class conductor of the younger generation with a large repertoire ranging from the Viennese classics to the Modern. In Salzburg in 1962 he confirmed his reputation, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a programme that reached from Ludwig van Beethoven’s 8^th Symphony via Richard Strauss’s Four last songs to Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, all of which made evident Kertész’s stylistic flexibility – everything was surging with energy and played with great lucidity. This concert (and thus the present recording of it) was further enriched by the presence of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf – a Strauss interpreter without peer to the present day.