Over recent years Universal has released a series of well-priced box sets showcasing their labels with individual discs nostalgically packaged in mini LP covers and a hefty booklet documenting the history of the label. The frustrating mix of mainstream favourites with a handful of rarities has proved the proverbial curate’s egg for hard-core collectors, who will be tempted by unreleased gems.

Archiv Produktion was founded in 1947 as a sub-label of Deutsche Grammophon specialising in early music, and this celebratory box gives us a chronological selection including a Bach organ recital by Helmut Walcha and some important first CD releases of 1950’s pioneers. More recent releases include a tempting taster from the superb 10CD box of Victoria by Michael Noone’s Ensemble Plus Ultra. For the first 20 discs period instruments are a rarity apart from encounters with mavericks like Jurgens and Harnoncourt.

To modern ears most of the early releases now sound quaintly “ye olde musicke” with tootling recorders and “birdcage rattled by a toasting-fork” harpsichords. They caught up by the 1980s signing Reinhard Goebel and his supergroup Musica Antiqua Köln and the finest of British groups, John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists and Trevor Pinnock’s English Concert.

Bach lovers are well catered for with Richter’s St Matthew Passion, Fischer-Dieskau’s 1953 Ich habe genug and Gardiner’s Mass in B Minor as are Handel fanciers by his early masterpiece La Resurrezione and a stunning Alcina with Joyce DiDonato. Despite the irrelevance of some of the early material this handsome box provides fascinating insights into the development of historically-informed performance practice. If you already own some of it hand out the originals to your friends and family and spread the love.