DG The Original

Wilhelm Kempff's cycle of the Beethoven Piano Concertos with Ferdinand Leitner and the Berlin Philharmonic is one of the great achievements of the golden age of stereo. Kempff had already recorded a magnificent mono cycle in the mid-1950s with the same orchestra under Paul Van Kempen (recently reissued on the box set "Wilhelm Kempff: The Complete 1950s Concerto Recordings" in DG's Original Masters series – see my review), but these new performances maintained his highest playing standards while offering the added dimension of stereo sound.

The equally majestic follow-up to one of the most successful box sets in recent memory: After KARAJAN 1960s here comes KARAJAN 1970s. Between 1970 and 1979, Herbert von Karajan recorded the incredible amount of 82 CDs worth of orchestral and choral music for DG This was the period that saw Karajan delve deeply into important repertoire that he never really tackled before or after – from Vivaldi to Mahler, to Berg, Schoenberg and Webern as well as Orff. Not to forget Christmas Concertos, National Anthems, and Prussian Marches.

4 CD Box set. Back in the 80's Artillery were one of the biggest thrash metal acts in Europe. The band were often compared to Metallica but actally released albums long before 'Master of Puppets in Denmark, the band native country. This is a special 4CD box featuring all the bands album, rare tracks and demos from the Road Runner records achives with 32 page booklet.

June 8, 2010 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of robert Schumann, one of the most important romantic composers of the 19th century. To celebrate his vast and impressive output, Deutsche Grammophon and Decca have compiled this 35-CD box set of his most important masterworks. Though this is not a complete edition, it includes every major work and a number of rarities covering every aspect of Schumann’s output.

Because the band risked experimenting with some bold new directions on 1990's By Inheritance, the album usually gets a bad rap from grumpy thrash purists and even some Artillery fans. But, with the benefit of hindsight, Artillery's third album frequently sounds like their finest hour, as much for boasting some of the most distinctive and imaginative songs of their career as for incorporating textural variety at a time when many of the Danish quintet's contemporaries were wallowing in stagnation…