Lorin Maazel

"Between 1972 and 1982 Maazel was Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra and between 1973-79 made a series of recordings for Decca – all of which are collected here. The repertory includes many orchestral spectaculars and Decca’s first recording in Cleveland, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, is one of the very best and a recording which has achieved reference status. “…. The precision of The Cleveland Orchestra is little short of miraculous… the recording is one of Decca’s most spectacular, searingly detailed but atmospheric too.” [The Penguin Guide]

Raimondi has advantages: the dark coloring of his voice, the vocal menace, the power of his bass." The three ladies - especially the Te Kanawa has become livelier, more insistent - Maazel has the singers and Mozart firmly in hand.

– Hermes Lexikon

It was George Szell who made the Cleveland Orchestra into a highly responsive virtuoso body, and when he died in 1970 he was in due course succeeded by Lorin Maazel, himself a renowned orchestral trainer. Here is Maazel's first Cleveland recording, notable for a quite outstanding quality of orchestral playing. The strings in particular have a remarkable depth of tone, though they play with great delicacy when it is needed; but then the orchestra as a whole plays with extraordinary virtuosity, tonal weight and exactness of ensemble. If the woodwind have a somewhat piquant blend this suits the music, which throughout is admirably served by Maazel's highly rhythmic, dramatic conducting.

This survey of Strauss cello works includes one of the finest Don Quixotes since Pierre Fournier’s matchlessly aristocratic Berlin and Cleveland accounts. Steven Isserlis first met Cervantes’ “Knight of Rueful Countenance” a decade ago when he recorded the work for Virgin with the Minnesota Orchestra under Edo de Waart. You could take absolute technical command for granted, but what was doubly impressive was the way Isserlis brought out the Don’s internalized conflicts (an old man’s obsession with chivalry nullified by failing physical powers) so vividly. His insights emerge even more potently in this remake with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian RSO. It’s impeccably delivered, with outstanding solo playing from Isserlis and his equally fine (but un-credited) Sancho Panza (viola) and also from the orchestra’s concertmaster.

Praised by Bloomberg for having “mastered the role” and “acting her socks off,” Angela Gheorghiu leads an all-star cast which includes Ramón Vargas and Roberto Frontali, with the brilliant conductor Lorin Maazel on the podium. Angela Gheorghiu is the definitive Violetta of her generation, the standard-setter against whom all other exponents of this role must be judged for the foreseeable future. Her affinity for Verdi‘s fragile, gentle-hearted courtesan is rooted in a fine balance of acting and singing skills. Giuseppe Verdi´s immortal opera in a sumptuous production by Liliana Cavani, with world famous singers – a treat for viewers everywhere!

There are compositions whose title sounds purposely reductive, and these certainly include Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninov's last composition, so the name of symphony would not seem usurped even if the form does not correspond to the classical one.

Maazel's mid-Eighties Mahler cycle was a prestige project, the first time that the august Vienna Phil. had ever recorded all nine symphonies. It's generally acknowledged that they play gloriously and that Sony provided vivid digital sound. As for Maazel, his notions are never less than unusual, so it can be said that his Mahler is like no one else's.