Just when we mourned the death at the age of 95 in March of Louis Fremaux, principal conductor of the CBSO during the 1970s, along came a precious 12-CD Warner Classics box set of every recording he made with the orchestra, all remastered this year from the original tapes.

Fremaux had already built up an impressive recorded repertoire on the Erato label among others, and covering a range of works from baroque to contemporary, with his Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra frequent collaborators. But it was these recordings with the CBSO for the EMI label, some of them utilising the gimmicky quadraphonic technique, which really launched the orchestra on the worldwide radar, and some of them remain go-to performances even today, 40 years or so since they were set down.

One such is the famous, benchmark account of the Saint-Saens Third Symphony, its mighty organ that of the Great Hall in Birmingham University where this recording was made in May 1972. Christopher Robinson, then conductor of the City of Birmingham Choir, and with so many illustrious appointments under his belt and still to come, was the organist for this magical document.

The Great Hall was the venue for many of these recordings, not least the famous Berlioz Requiem (where else in Birmingham in those days could comfortably accommodate the four brass bands and multiple timpani which augment the composer’s already huge forces?). This was a wonderful showcase for the crack CBSO Chorus Fremaux and Gordon Clinton, principal of the Birmingham School of Music, had set up in 1973. Filling the whole of the first CD in this box, the Requiem spills over into the second, which is completed with other Berlioz bits and pieces, chief among which are orchestral extracts from his epic opera Les Troyens.

The list of other venues for recordings throws up some surprises among those we would expect: London’s Abbey Road studios; Bedworth Civic Centre (this for the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole with solo violinist Yan Pascal Tortelier, his illustrious father Paul taking over for a Saint-Saens Cello Concerto, another of which he recorded with Fremaux and the CBSO at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester; the Corby Festival Hall; and, of course, Birmingham Town Hall, the orchestra’s then home.

There are some forgotten treasures here: Massenet’s incidental music to Le Cid, given with an elegant vigour which was so much Fremaux’s hallmark; Bizet’s previously unrecorded Roma; Ibert’s previously unrecorded Symphonie Marine; and Honegger’s powerful locomotive-portrait, Pacific 231 (a recording which deserves to stand alongside the composer’s own, febrile one), among others.

I’m convinced the Honegger was an influence on the Walton of both the First Symphony and the Henry V film music, and Walton features spectacularly in this CD set. Fremaux had such an affinity with this composer (perhaps because of the deep emotion concealed behind the elegance and wit), and here we have both Facade suites, the Gloria, the Te Deum (CBSO Chorus and Choristers of Worcester Cathedral to the fore), absolutely scintillating performances of the Coronation Marches Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre, and an enchanting Bach-derived The Wise Virgins ballet suite.

The latter kicks off a disc otherwise devoted to the famous recordings Fremaux and the CBSO made of the music of John McCabe: his song-cycle Notturni ed Alba (Jill Gomez the soprano soloist), and Second Symphony, performances which really put orchestra and conductor on the map as exponents of British contemporary music. Their performances of Benjamin Britten were the stuff of legend, but a projected recording of that composer’s War Requiem was blown away in the internal political scandal which brought Fremaux’s relationship with the CBSO to an abrupt end in 1978.

But back to happier things, and a disc largely devoted to the music of Francis Poulenc, friend and colleague of Louis Fremaux. We do not have here the Stabat Mater, the manuscript of which Poulenc entrusted to Fremaux on a railway station platform (as Fremaux told me), but we do have the glittering Gloria, Norman Burrowes the soprano soloist, the haunting Piano Concerto with Cristina Ortiz, and the irresistible Les Biches ballet suite.

The last disc in the set might break a few hearts. It begins with the first recording Fremaux made with the CBSO, in June 1970 at Birmingham Town Hall, and it features the Birmingham-born tenor David Hughes in various excerpts from opera and operetta (quaintly sung in English translation). Hughes had been a successful pop crooner who longed to break into the world of real opera, and he had achieved his aim. As a schoolboy in 1964 I saw him perform at Glyndebourne in Mozart’s Idomeneo, alongside a very slim Luciano Pavarotti, no less. But not long after this release with the CBSO (Fremaux showing all his experience as an opera conductor), he was struck down with a heart attack, just as his operatic career was about to burgeon.

This is a wonderful set to treasure, for Fremaux, for the CBSO, for the Chorus, and indeed for David Hughes. And it’s good to know that two of my Birmingham Post colleagues are deeply involved: Maggie Cotton as percussionist in so many of these performances, and Richard Bratby, whose insert-notes are exemplary for their information.