(FORTUNE Magazine) – The ten-disk New York Philharmonic: The Historic Broadcasts, 1923 to 1987 (New York Philharmonic Special Editions, 800-557-8268) features the era's greatest conductors and soloists--and some truly amazing sound effects.

These are the between-movement coughs, coat shifts, and foot shuffles that mark live performance and make it seem so fresh when recorded. When Arthur Rubinstein and Bruno Walter pause at the end of the great first movement of the Chopin E minor piano concerto (from 1947), you can even hear the rumble of a subway under Carnegie Hall. You can imagine Bernstein leaning and swooping his way through the modernist thickets of Alban Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces, from 1965, or the white-crowned Stokowski cajoling the orchestra through Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony in 1947.

And the most thrilling? Erich Leinsdorf conducting Mozart's Symphony No. 29 in A major just ten years ago. It's perfect Mozart--serene, stately, glowing--and I don't even mind that the coughers kept it down that night.

--Daniel Okrent