The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works

London Philharmonic Orchestra & David Parry - The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music (2011)
MP3 320 CBR kbps | Tracks: 50 | 04:22:52 | 619 Mb + 3% Recovery
Genre: Classical | Label: X5 Music Group

The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music is a selection of classical works recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with conductor David Parry. The result was solely for the digital market. This is the very first time a classical collection is recorded for digital release only and was 13th place on the Billboard classical music chart with more than 135,000 units sold (and counting).

It may not contain everything written by French modernist composer Francis Poulenc – the solo works, the chamber works, the stage works, and the songs with piano accompaniment are naturally not included – but Charles Dutoit's five-disc set of the orchestral works, the concerted works, the sacred choral works, and the vocal works with orchestral accompaniment by Poulenc has everything else that matters and lots, lots more. It has the charming Piano Concerto and the delightful Two Piano Concerto, the impressive Organ Concerto and the beguiling harpsichord concerto called Concert champêtre, the four-movement Sinfonietta and the seven-movement Suite française, the ballet Les biches and the Concerto chorégraphique called Aubade, plus 11 other shorter orchestral works.

If you're already a fan of Russian music of the Imperial Age, you already know at least the name Mily Balakirev, the living link between Glinka, the father of Russian music, and Mussorgsky, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer who sacrificed much of his composing time to his pupils and part of his life to his insanity, but who nevertheless turned out indubitable masterpieces in several genres. The First Symphony and the symphonic poem Tamara are probably his best-known orchestral works, but his best-known single work in any genre is certainly his Islamy, the piece of pseudo-ethnic, super-virtuoso sex-dance music that Russian pianists still occasionally trot out as an encore.

Professor Greenberg sets Bach in context by tracing the musical traditions and composers from whom he drew his inspiration, and explaining how Bach absorbed these influences to become the transcendent composer of the High Baroque. According to Professor Greenberg, no other composer is more representative of the period and its aesthetic of emotional extravagance and technical control.You will also learn how Bach's background—at least 42 of his relatives were professionally involved with music—and his strong German Lutheran heritage shaped his development as an artist.

Underappreciated in his own time, Johann Sebastian Bach has ascended to Olympian heights in the estimation of generations of music lovers. But what is it about his music that makes it great? Composer and musicologist Robert Greenberg helps you hear the extraordinary sweep of Bach's music and understand his compositional language—whether you're a devoted admirer or a casual listener.

Of the compilations released to mark the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy's birth this year, this is the most treasurable. As a survey of the music of perhaps of the greatest 20th-century composer it could hardly be bettered, especially within recordings from a single label, or rather, a single group of labels, for as well as Deutsche Grammophon recordings it also includes material from Philips and Decca, which are all now part of the Universal stable.

RCO - Anthology of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Vol 3, 1960-1970 (2005) {14CD Box Set RCO 05001, Limited Edition}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 4.67 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.40 Gb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 230 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1960-70, 2005 Radio Netherlands Music / RCO LIve | RCO 05001
Classical / Orchestral

Despite rumors some months ago that the RCOA series might be discontinued (fortunately unfounded), here we have Volume III, a 14-CD set that contains much of interest, but surely—for this collector—doesn't live up to its potential. For me, ideally that would concist of some of the outstanding performances of great symphonic music played by this magnificent orchestra, recorded in the extraordinary acoustics of the Concertgebouw with the usual Radio Nederland sonic expertise. During the decade represented in this set (1960-1970) the Concertgebouw Orchestra's programming often emphasized contemporary music and that surely is reflected in this album. We have well over five hours of music by Martin, Varèse, Berg, Webern, Henze, Lutoslawski, Nono and Dallapiccola as well as Dutch composers Ketting, Escher, and Vermeulen, and Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz's Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion, an 18-minute three-movement work of imagination and vivid scoring.