Furtwängler’s highly praised 1947 performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, made with Yehudi Menuhin, one of the foremost violinists of the last century, was his first post-war studio recording following his flight to Switzerland after the German collapse of 1945. Sixteen months later, at the end of 1948, Furtwängler led the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the first of several sessions at which this unique partnership – representing the absolute peak of European music-making – recreated to the full the genius of one of Mozart’s finest compositions.