Set down in September 1968, Herbert von Karajan's Prokofiev 5 has long enjoyed classic status and for many collectors it remains the best version ever. More than three decades on, DG's bright, glowing recording still sounds pretty lustrous (if perhaps a little light in the bass), while the Berliners respond with tremendous fervour, wondrous breadth of tone and exemplary discipline. Karajan's actual reading, though a little too smooth-edged for some tastes, is paced to perfection, full of epic grandeur and always searingly concentrated. And what of the Stravinsky coupling? Well, this same team's earlier 1964 recording of the The Rite of Spring came in for some stinging criticism, not least from the 82-year-old composer himself (who hailed the finished article "a pet savage rather than a real one"). Here DG gives us Karajan's remake of 13 years later, a harder-edged, leaner beast than its predecessor, crisply engineered to boot. The virtuosity of the BPO is as compelling as ever, though it's still all perhaps fractionally too urbane and lacking in choreographic flair to be entirely convincing. No matter, this remains a notably generous and self-recommending reissue in the Deutsche Grammophon Originals series.--Andrew Achenbach