Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein conducts three works by Tchaikovsky: Symphony in F Minor, op 36 (performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra), Symphony in E Minor, op 64 (performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra) and Violin Concerto in D Major, op 35 (featuring Russian violin virtuoso Boris Belkin).

Seiji Ozawa was the first Asian conductor to rise to international stardom. After his Koussivitzky Prize at Tanglewood, he honed his skills as assistant to Leonard Bernstein in New York and Herbert von Karajan in Berlin. Directorships of the Nissei Theatre in Tokyo, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Festival, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera followed. In 2016 he withdrew from the international scene to Japan, dedicating his time to the Mito Chamber Orchestra and to teaching.

On the eve of his centenary in 2018, Sony Classical releases the most important collection, Leonard Bernstein’s classic American Columbia recordings, remastered from their original 2- and multi-track analogue tapes. This has allowed for the creation of a natural balance (for example, between the orchestra and solo instruments) that brings the quality of these half-century-old recordings, excellent for their time, up to the standards of today’s audiophiles. In addition, there has been a meticulous restoration of some earlier masterings in which LP surface noise was too rigorously eliminated at the expense of the original brilliance.

Fans of Leonard Bernstein will not want to miss the chance to snap up this limited edition 60-CD set, Bernstein Symphony Edition. With a list price of just over two dollars per disc, it's a bargain not to be missed. What's most impressive about these recordings of well over 100 symphonies made between 1953 and 1976, almost all of which feature the New York Philharmonic, is the scope and depth of Bernstein's repertoire. The complete symphonic works of many of the great symphonists are here, including Beethoven, Schumann …

Celibidache was without question one of the most important and original conductors in recent memory. He was a perfectionist who disliked what he perceived to be the synthetic sounds created in the modern recording studio, preferring the immediacy of the concert platform and the interaction with a live audience.

Fans of Leonard Bernstein will not want to miss the chance to snap up this limited edition 60-CD set, Bernstein Symphony Edition. With a list price of just over two dollars per disc, it's a bargain not to be missed. What's most impressive about these recordings of well over 100 symphonies made between 1953 and 1976, almost all of which feature the New York Philharmonic, is the scope and depth of Bernstein's repertoire.

On the eve of his centenary in 2018, Sony Classical releases the most important collection, Leonard Bernstein’s classic American Columbia recordings, remastered from their original 2- and multi-track analogue tapes. This has allowed for the creation of a natural balance (for example, between the orchestra and solo instruments) that brings the quality of these half-century-old recordings, excellent for their time, up to the standards of today’s audiophiles. In addition, there has been a meticulous restoration of some earlier masterings in which LP surface noise was too rigorously eliminated at the expense of the original brilliance.

Deutsche Grammophon's 2010 reissue of Mikhail Pletnev's recordings of the symphonies and major orchestral works of Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky is a seven-disc trimline box set that presents the music in a logical fashion and meets expectations of what this admired conductor can do. Pletnev leads the Russian National Orchestra with confidence and clearheaded thinking, and his interpretations of Tchaikovsky definitely lean to the rational side of Romanticism: as passionate and emotional as the works are in the public imagination, Pletnev always remembers that Tchaikovsky was at heart a classicist, so he is careful not to neglect the formal concerns and gracefulness of melody that are the soul of the music.

This is the follow up to the extremely popular album Best Classics 100. The 6 CDs are themed differently from those in the first album and cover 'Spectacular Classics', 'Eternal Classics', 'Romantic Classics', 'Instrumental Classics', 'Nostalgic Classics' and 'Favourite Encores'.