Fireball Heart Herbert Pechta

Herbert von Karajan directed this film of Verdi's Shakespearean masterpiece as well as conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. As the tragic Moor of Venice, arguably his greatest role, Jon Vickers (in the words of critic David Cairns) "commands both the notes and the moral grandeur of the part… And he has the aura of greatness - greatness of heart, of bearing, of musical and dramatic conception". Mirella Freni is a heartbreakingly lovely and fragile Desdemona, while the fine English baritone Peter Glossop plays the villainous Jago.

For Gustav Mahler, composing his early symphonies meant „building a world”. His Ninth, however, seems more concerned with the deconstruction of this world – a look back, a long farewell. In the draft of his score, he noted words like „O youth! Vanished! O love! Blown away!“. In 1909, his idyllic world was destroyed, having been diagnosed with a heart valve defect two years earlier – a disease that would ultimately lead to his death.

The surprising thing about these three discs is that the performances get better the further we depart from the shores of Romanticism and tonality. Not what you'd expect from von K and the Berliners. Pelleas benefits from wonderfully lush orchestral playing from the Berlin Philharmonic, but it feels more like very colourful scene painting rather than real drama. To get to the Romantic heart of this piece, try Barbirolli: for its expressionist, forward looking (via Verklarte Nacht to Erwartung) side, go to Boulez.

Celebrating one of the most revered conductors of the 20th century, this series was originally released to commemorate Herbert von Karajan’s 100th birthday in 2008. Using innovate technology to recreate the original concert acoustics, the audio for these DVDs has been re-recorded at the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin and the Musikverein in Vienna, Karajan’s two favourite concert venues, to create re-mastered surround-sound versions of these classic performances. With each DVD featuring von Karajan conducting either the Berlin Philharmonic or Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, two of the highest regarded orchestras in the world, this series really does marry the greatest music, the highest calibre performers, and the best possible audio-visual presentation.

Karajan was a great Tchaikovsky conductor. Although he recorded the last three symphonies many times he did not turn to the first three until the end of the 1970s. There’s no doubt that the reason these early symphonies sound so fresh is because the Berlin orchestra was not over-familiar with them. The Tchaikovsky symphonies were recorded at the Philharmonie between October 1975 and February 1979 and are presented with their Slavonic March and the Capriccio Italien, both recorded in Jesus-Christus-Kirche in October 1966. The six symphonies span the whole of Tchaikovsky’s career as a composer, from 1866 until 1893, the year of his death.

Born in Strasbourg in 1945, French crooner Herbert Léonard started his career as guitarist in Les Lionceaux in the mid-'60s before he decided to go it alone following two years of military service. He found fame with French-language versions of Gene Pitney's "Something's Got a Hold of My Heart" ("Quelque Chose Tient Mon Coeur") and Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" ("Pour un Peu d'Amour"), but struggled to sustain his success in the '70s, when he instead devoted his time to writing books on his other main passion, Russian aircraft from World War II.

Although his first four solo albums were commercial disappointments, 1984's 4630 Bochum turned Herbert Grönemeyer into the biggest musician in Germany. Featuring a blue-collar, stadium rock sound and highly literate lyrics – including double entendres, puns, and other creative word play – 4630 Bochum became the best-selling German album of all time, a record it held until Grönemeyer's Mensch beat it two decades later.