San Francisco Symphony Gustav Mahler

Since he became the music director and conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas has largely focused his attention on presenting the symphonies of Gustav Mahler in splendid audiophile recordings, for which he has received critical and popular praise. So his first hybrid SACD of works by Claude Debussy comes as a surprise, not only because the sound world is quite different from Mahler's, but Tilson Thomas' interest in Debussy has seemed less obsessive over the years.

The Classical Hall of Fame contains recordings that we critics have judged to be worthy of perpetual enshrinement, and thus it would seem an odd place to air one’s purely personal preferences. That being said, however, it is also true that we first receive sensory experience, and it is through this personal portal that we then extrapolate and objectify, so I begin this induction with some personal observations.

The 2nd of September 2010 marks Maestro Seiji Ozawa’s 75th birthday. This new 11-CD set presents Seiji Ozawa in a wide variety of symphonic repertory with the orchestra’s with which he has been most closely associated since the early 1970s – from the San Francisco Symphony in 1972 in a programme of music centred round Romeo and Juliet, through his twenty-nine years at the Boston Symphony, to the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics and the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan – a celebration of a truly international Maestro.

A 50-CD set of legendary recordings celebrating the world-renowned Decca Sound. Classic-status pioneering stereo recordings from the past 60 years and starring a galaxy of internationally-acclaimed artistic talent.

The 2nd of September 2010 marks Maestro Seiji Ozawa’s 75th birthday.
This new 11-CD set presents Seiji Ozawa in a wide variety of symphonic repertory with the orchestra’s with which he has been most closely associated since the early 1970s – from the San Francisco Symphony in 1972 in a programme of music centred round Romeo and Juliet, through his twenty-nine years at the Boston Symphony, to the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics and the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan – a celebration of a truly international Maestro.

Solti's interpretations held more than surface excitement. In conducting Beethoven, for example, he long held that the symphonies should be played with all their repeats to maintain their structural integrity, and he carefully rethought his approach to tempo, rhythm, and balance in those works toward the end of his life.