DG The Original

The Second Volume of Leonard Bernsteins complete recorded legacy on Deutsche Grammophon: an original jackets collection in an LP-size box with deluxe book, taking in some of his most famous and celebrated recordings. The set comprises Bernsteins complete recordings of composers from Mahler (19 CDs) to Wagner. Includes all of Bernsteins recordings of Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Strauss, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. This repertoire is supplemented by the five American Decca CDs, with performances and analyses of Beethovens Erocia, Schumanns Second, Dvoraks New World, Brahmss Fourth and Tchaikovskys Pathetique.

A magnificent cycle - superb interpretations that haven't been superseded

The Beethoven piano trios have been at the hub of the Beaux Arts Trio's repertoire throughout its long history. Despite a series of personnel switches, the group's approach to Beethoven has remained outstandingly consistent for more than 40 years. The first ever Beaux Arts Beethoven set is currently available in Philips' "The Early Years" series. It was produced during the mid-1960s and did not include transcriptions of the Op. 20 Septet or Second symphony. When Isador Cohen replaced founding violinist Daniel Guilet in 1968, the group (which also included the pianist Menahem Pressler, longest serving member of the ensemble, and cellist Bernard Greenhouse) would not return to Beethoven for another decade.

Few musical partnerships have elicited such divergent critical opinions as Maurizio Pollini and Claudio Abbado in Brahms’s two piano concertos. Reviewing the First Concerto in April 1999, Richard Osborne found ‘a lack of quickness and intelligence in the inner-part playing’ while missing ‘any real sense of interaction between soloist and orchestra’. A year earlier Bryce Morrison, in his review of the Second Concerto, had found it ‘impossible to think of them apart, their unity [here] is so indissoluble’. BM also praised what he heard as ‘a granitic reading stripped of all surplus gesture, preening mannerism or overt display, intent only on the unveiling of a musical or moral truth’.

As with many of the other English beat groups of the '60s, Alvin Lee cut his musical teeth in Hamburg, Germany in a band called the Jaybirds. By 1966, back in England, he had changed the name of his band to Ten Years After and was rapidly becoming a major attraction because of the virtuosity of his solo work…

Let's make no doubt about this review from the start: Alvin Lee solo is not the same thing as Ten Years After and such comparisons miss the mark entirely…