Albert Sammons, Peers Coetmore, Bbc Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult Moeran: Symphony

Copland wrote Billy the Kid in 1938 on commission from Lincoln Kirstein, a noted New York impresario and cofounder of the New York City Ballet. The music became an instant success, incorporating as it does several well-known folk and Western tunes and telling an episodic story more about the Wild West in general than specifically about the notorious outlaw William H. Bonney (born Henry McCartney).

French composer Florent Schmitt, a part of Ravel's Les Apaches group around 1900, has received renewed attention from recording companies, and this release is part of a group of Schmitt discs from Chandos, which has the engineering chops to handle their bulk. The suites from Antoine et Cléopâtre here were part of the music written for a six-hour ballet commissioned by dancer Ida Rubinstein.

Carl Vine AO is one of Australia's best known and most frequently performed composers, with an impressive orchestral catalogue featuring eight symphonies and 13 concertos.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies No.13 and No. 15; Modest Mussorgsky: 'Khovanshchina' Prelude; Songs and Dances of Death -
Sir Anthony Hopkins (narrator); Sergei Aleksashkin (bass); Men of the Chicago Symphony Chorus; Chicago Symphony Orchestra;
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
Classical | 2 CD | EAC Rip | 527 MB | FLAC+LOG+M3U+Cue | Full scans | 3 RS links
Publisher: Decca Eloquence (Australia)

Solti came late in life to the music of Shostakovich, and in his introduction to the recording of the Thirteenth Symphony (reprinted in the booklet) explains the music's effect on him. These rare recordings have long been out of the catalogue, and are now issued as a 2CD set at super-budget price. Sergei Aleksashkin is the commanding bass in the Thirteenth and in the Mussorgsky songs, and Sir Anthony Hopkins intersperses Yevtushenko poems in this unique recording.

This is the fifth and now final volume in our survey of orchestral works by the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. Gramophone wrote of a previous volume in the series (CHSA5106) that it ‘offers a broad view of Lutosławski’s creative profile, which the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner fleshes out with playing that is as polished as it is animated, and alert to the individuality of Lutosławski’s musical vocabulary and mode of expression’.

Jean Sibelius - Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7
London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Colin Davis
PS3 SACD ISO: 2,81 GB (2.0/5.1) | EAC Rip, FLAC LOG & CUE: 211 MB (2.0) | 24B/88,2kHz FLAC (2.0): 860 MB | Lossless Artwork: 156 MB | Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: LSO Live LSO0051 | Country/Year: UK 2004 | Genre: Classical, Romantic | Hoster: Filepost/Filefactory

…But even compared with the LSO's fervent performances of the Sibelius symphonies with Davis in the '90s cannot compare with the fire of these 2003 recordings of the Third and Seventh. With the LSO's passionate virtuosity behind him, Davis creates nuanced but powerful performances, performances that are detailed yet sweeping, lyric yet epic, but, above all, loving. Davis and the LSO's Third is light but shot with shadows, poised but relentless, mysterious but triumphant. The Seventh is the sun cresting the snow-capped mountains, the wind rushing down from the peaks, their song soaring in the high, sharp air. Even though Davis does hum, anyone who loves Sibelius will have to hear these performances.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio…

Following their award-winning Mendelssohn cycle, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony Orchestra embark on a new journey through the symphonies of Robert Schumann. Gardiner feels the Schumann symphonies are criticised unfairly and with these recordings he is on a mission to dispel the cobweb of myths around these symphonic masterpieces.