Dance Suite Bartok

Granting a long-held wish of many record collectors, Sony Classical is issuing the complete monaural American Columbia discography of Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in a vast box set of 120 CDs, all in new remasterings. Almost all of this material will be appearing for the first time on CD on Sony Classical. Indeed, 152 of these recordings have never been released at all on CD before now.

“Unquestionably one of the greatest pianists of all time” is how Gramophone magazine has described Martha Argerich. Her relationship with Warner Classics goes back to 1965 and her victory at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Over several decades it has produced a rich catalogue of live and studio recordings, embracing a repertoire that spans three centuries, a diversity of genres, and collaborations with such figures as Renaud Capuçon, Charles Dutoit, Nelson Freire, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky and Itzhak Perlman.

Known for their onstage charisma and camaraderie, Ottawa’s Lara Deutsch (flute) and Adam Cicchillitti (guitar) began performing together in 2019 after discovering their mutual love for the music of Piazzolla. With an established discography as individual artists on the Analekta and Leaf Music labels, as well as numerous accolades in their respective fields, one of the primary focuses of the duo is to perform and promote the works of their Canadian friends and colleagues internationally.

Few record labels can boast as glorious a legacy as Sony Classical. This lavish four-disc set chronicles the finest performances available on the label from the past ninety-five years. Eighty selections comprising over four hours of music are accompanied by two lavishly illustrated booklets highlighting Sony Classical's stellar history.

Eugene Ormandy & The Philadelphia Orchestra - The Columbia Stereo Collection 1964-1983 [94CDs Box Set] (2024)
EAC Rip | FLAC (*track+.cue) | Run Time: 03:14:07:35 | 26.08 Gb
Genre: Classical | Label: Sony Classical

This massive new reissue from Eugene Ormandy’s stereo discography collects all the Columbia Masterworks recordings he made in Philadelphia between the early 1960s and early 1980s. Sony Classical’s new 94-CD box set once again demonstrates what noted critic Jed Distler, reviewing the previous instalment of this ambitious project “The Columbia Stereo Collection 1958–1963” in Gramophone’s December 2023 issue, characterized as “the Philadelphia Orchestra’s brilliance and versatility as well as Ormandy’s unflappable consistency and habitually underestimated interpretative gifts”. Some of these performances – including the complete recording of Bach’s St. John Passion, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis, Schubert’s Sixth Symphony and a disc of opera choruses with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, as well as Ginastera’s Concerto for Strings and the ballet music from Massenet’s opera Le Cid – have never appeared before in the digital medium, and they shine a light into new corners of Ormandy’s astonishingly large repertoire.

RCA Red Seal is a classical music label and is now part of Sony Masterworks.
The Red Seal label was begun in 1902 by the Gramophone Company in the United Kingdom and was quickly adopted by its United States affiliate, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and its president, Eldridge R. Johnson. Distinctive, red paper information labels affixed to the centre of the two affiliated companies' black shellac discs inspired the name.

Fritz Reiner was one of the foremost conductors of his time. Crowning his long career in Europe and America was the decade from 1954 to 1963 as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – an illustrious partnership that ranks along such other historical tenures as Karajan’s in Berlin, Szell’s in Cleveland and Bernstein’s in New York.