Klaus Tennstedt

As one of the most successful classical performers of his time, violinist Nigel Kennedy's genre-defying music helped him achieve a level of fame typically reserved for pop stars. A native of Brighton, England, he studied music at the Yehudi Menuhin School and at Juilliard; his debut recording, Elgar Violin Concerto, appeared in 1984, shortly followed by Nigel Kennedy Plays Jazz.

100 Best Sacred Works (2007)
Unknown Rip | FLAC (Tracks+Cue) | No Covers | 7 hours | 1.93 GB (6CD)
Genre: Sacred | Label: EMI Classics

This 6CD collection features works from Byrd to Barber via Brahms and provides a fascinating insight into the evolution of sacred music.

It's a tall order to compile the best classical music of the twentieth century, but EMI has selected its top 100 classics for this six-disc set, and it's difficult to argue with most of the choices. Without taking sides in the great ideological debates of the modern era – traditionalist vs. avant-garde, tonal vs. atonal, styles vs. schools, and so on – the label has picked the composers whose reputations seem most secure at the turn of the twenty-first century and has chosen representative excerpts of their music. Certainly, the titans of modernism are here, such as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev, Claude Debussy, and Benjamin Britten, to name just a few masters, but they don't cast such a large shadow that they eclipse either their more backward-looking predecessors or their more experimental successors.

This 6 CD set contains an unrivalled collection of 100 favourite romantic classics, performed by some of the world’s leading artists. Among them are the singers Maria Callas, Natalie Dessay, Angela Gheorghiu. Barbara Hendricks, Luciano Pavarotti and Kiri Te Kanawa; instrumentalists Leif Ove Andsnes, Martha Argerich, Jacqueline du Pre, Yehudi Menuhin, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Maxim Vengerov; plus conductors Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Andre Previn, Sir Simon Rattle and Herbert von Karajan.

Mahler’s Resurrection has been much recorded in recent years, so much so that new versions prompt one to groan inwardly and mutter: ‘Not another one’. Such ubiquity has its price, for any newcomer has to be something out of the ordinary if it’s to have any impact. Of recent releases David Zinman (Sony-BMG), Jonathan Nott (Tudor) and James Levine (Orfeo) definitely belong in this category; Vladimir Jurowski (LPO) and Markus Stenz (Oehms) manifestly don’t. And now Oehms are taking another bite out of the cherry, with the Hamburg orchestra led by their chief conductor Simone Young. Curiously, this was recorded at around the same time as the Stenz Mahler 2, which seems extravagant in this already overstocked field.

RCO - Anthology of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Volume 6, 1990-2000 (2011) {14CD Box Set, RCO 11004} (Complete Artwork)
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 4.36 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.40 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 141 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1990-2000, 2011 Radio Netherlands Music / RCO LIve | RCO 11004
Classical / Orchestral

I bought this shortly after my first visit to the Concertgebouw itself, when I was bowled over by the hall's superb acoustics and atmosphere. So these live broadcast recordings were pungent evocations of the experience. But even without that, this is a box worth having, if you can afford it. The first two discs alone are dynamite: a marvellously dramatic, idiomatic account of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle with Ivan Fischer and Hungarian soloists, followed by one of the best Mahler Fifths I've heard, from Tennstedt in 1990.