Franz Joseph Schmidt

Wieder einmal vergrub sich Gardiner in alle möglichen Quellen, um auch Haydns lebens- und sinnenfrohes Oratorium in neuen, trotz schlanker Besetzung nicht minder prallen Farben malen zu können. In den teilweise hymnischen Chorszenen treibt er seinen erstklassigen Monteverdi-Chor behende durch die Fugen und enorme Steigerungen hinauf. Sein Orchester stürzt sich geradezu auf die vielen Lautmalereien, und die Solisten können nahezu als Idealbesetzung gelten. Auch wegen der exzellenten Aufnahmequalität die zweite Platte des Monats.

inexplicably, both these Quintets by Bruckner and Schmidt are rarely performed and recorded. One demands to know why these magnificent works are not part of the standard repertoire. Here the scores are given performances of the strongest advocacy by the Vienna Philharmonia Quintet. The recordings were made for Decca over thirty years ago and they remain among the finest examples of late-Romantic chamber music on record.

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately trained at Chetham's School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the International Opera School of the Royal College of Music. Having won both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and Royal Overseas League Award in the same year, she attended the prestigious Academy of the Verbier Festival. She writes of this project: 'It has been my great pleasure to record with Joseph once again. We have long shared a mutual passion for early-twentieth-century-romantic Lieder and talked of making a disc including songs by Mahler and Strauss.

175 years ago, on March 28th 1842, Otto Nicolai raised the baton for the first ever concert of a new ensemble destined to become one of the world's great orchestras. The Wiener Philharmoniker 175th Anniversary Edition offers a hand-picked selection on 44 CDs of the best albums of the orchestra released on the label. Presented in a luxury box with matt lamination and hot-foil printed gold, the box includes original cover art, rare photographs from the Wiener Philharmoniker Archives as well as two new essays by Dr. Silvia Kargl, Head of the Historic Archive of the Vienna Philharmonic, and Richard Evidon. With a Bonus DVD of the famous 1989 New Year's Concert conducted by Carlos Kleiber.

Carl Seemann's Complete Deutsche Grammophon Recordings box set features recordings with Fritz Lehmann, Berliner Philharmoniker, NDR Sinfonieorchester, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Bamberger Symphoniker, Mnchner Philharmoniker, Ferdinand Leitner and many more. Highlights include his celebrated Mozart records on 11 CDs and his famous Beethoven and Brahms duo recordings with violinist Wolfgang Schneider.

The orchestral songs and choral works of Austrian fin de siècle composer Joseph Marx have many virtues; they are superbly written, deeply felt, and utterly sincere. If that were all it took, Marx would be known as one of the great composers of his time. But a great composer must also be inspired, and Marx was not. His reactionary harmonic language rarely sounds like it was written after 1880, the year of the composer's birth.