Together with Beethoven’s First and Fourth Symphonies and Leonora Overture No. 1 (Naxos 8.110854), these Toscanini performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra complete the commercial releases sanctioned for issue by the Maestro at the time of his visits to London at the invitation of the BBC in the middle and late 1930s. Toscanini laid great emphasis on wanting Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony to sound smooth and ‘pastoral’. Although the sessions were spread over four months, there is a wonderful fluidity and spontaneous ease of expression that is not found in many of his other recordings of the work. Although Toscanini was perhaps more renowned for the wealth of recordings with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, both live and more particularly in the studio, there is no question that the BBC caught him in full maturity and at the peak of his powers.