Berliner Philharmoniker Mahler Symphony No.

For its 125th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon is releasing legendary recordings with highest sound standards: The new audiophile vinyl series The Original Source presents outstanding recordings from the 1970s in a whole new sound quality. For this, the renowned Emil Berliner Studios have remastered and edited the original four-track tapes in 100% analog quality (AAA) using technologies developed specifically to produce the series.

The end of an era and a musical highlight: Simon Rattle’s farewell as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker with Gustav Mahler’s stunning Sixth Symphony was given a standing ovation by the audience.

Gustav Mahler described his Fifth Symphony as a "cursed work" that "no one capers".

Known as one of the world's finest orchestras, Berliner Philhamoniker has performed and recorded the symphonies and choral works of the great classical music composers since it was founded in 1882.

For its 125th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon is releasing legendary recordings with highest sound standards: The new audiophile vinyl series The Original Source presents outstanding recordings from the 1970s in a whole new sound quality. For this, the renowned Emil Berliner Studios have remastered and edited the original four-track tapes in 100% analog quality (AAA) using technologies developed specifically to produce the series.

GBAs time has gone by in my collecting of Mahler on cd I have often been guided by the well known music critic 'TD'. Most of the time TD proves invaluable in pointing the Mahler listener in the right direction but, on occasion, I have found myself disagreeing with him - and this is now the third time in which I must disagree.

Known as one of the world's finest orchestras, Berliner Philhamoniker has performed and recorded the symphonies and choral works of the great classical music composers since it was founded in 1882. It has been led by a series of major conductors including Austria's Herbert von Karajan and England's Simon Rattle, who was succeeded in 2019 by Kirill Petrenko from Russia. The orchestra performs more than 100 concerts a year at the Berlin Philharmonie and tours internationally. It has made thousands of recordings and won Grammy Awards and Gramophone Awards. The orchestra grew out of the Bilse Kapelle, which was established in the 1860s by Prussian composer and conductor Benjamin Bilse with 60 players.

The chemistry between tradition and innovation powered Sir Simon Rattle’s relationship with the Berliner Philharmoniker, above all during his time as the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and Artistic Director (2002-2018). As the successor to Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado, his mission was to take this pre-eminent musical institution into the 21st century. “What Rattle has brought … is a new spirit of adventure,” declared The Times in 2006, and later looked back on the “exhilarating, epoch-hopping eclecticism of Simon Rattle’s era in Berlin”. Through all this Rattle preserved the orchestra’s distinctive sonority, notable, in the words of the New York Times, for its “sheer grandeur … and rich, red-blooded warmth”. He first conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1987, and the recordings in this 45CD box span the years from 1994 to 2012. Very much reflecting Rattle’s vision for the orchestra, the symphonic, choral and operatic works range from pillars of Austro-German Classicism, Romanticism and Modernism through French, Russian and Czech repertoire to showcases for contemporary contemporary composers from around the world – and even a film soundtrack. As Rattle said at the end of his tenure in Berlin: “Music is for everybody, and we’ve all believed this.”

An impressive cast of conductors is featured in this collection of the best slow movements performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker! Judge for yourselves: Simon Rattle, André Cluytens, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Lorin Maazel, John Barbirolli, Wilhelm Furtwängler… Take your time to discover this compendium of the best adagios in classical music, from the grandiose symphonies of Bruckner, Mahler and Beethoven to the moving concertos of Bach, Grieg and Sibelius, and of course Barber’s unmissable Adagio for Strings.