A total of 63 tracks, over 11 hours of recording. Recordings with such renowned conductors as Brahms: No. 3 (Rattle), Schumann: No. 4 (Harnoncourt), Saint-Saëns: No. 3 (Mehta), Dvorak: From the New World (Kempe), Brahms: No. 2 (Keilbert), Schumann: No. 3 (Tenstedt), Mendelssohn: No. 2 (Sawallisch), Bruckner: No. 7 (Barenboim), etc. Recorded between 1951 and 2008.
There is no shortage of the coupling of Grieg & Schumann's piano concertos, and this one surely is among the very best, along with Lipatti, Fleisher and Moravec. Kovacevich's Grieg is regarded by many as the best ever, though I have to give the nod to Lipatti/Galliera. The Schumann is equally compelling and ranks up there with those of Rubinstein/Leinsdorf, Lipatti/Karajan, Gieseking/Furtwangler, Fleisher/Szell and Argerich/Harnoncourt. So you have two top tier concertos on one disc which should be in every classical music library. Plus the sound on this one is better than any of the other above mentioned.
The legendary label, deutsche harmonia mundi, releases a special 50 CD boxset featuring star performers such as Hille Perl, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Dorothee Oberlinger, Simone Kermes, and Nuria Rial and more! This collection displays the sheer variety available from the dhm archive. A perfect collection ranging Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic music.
175 years ago, on March 28th 1842, Otto Nicolai raised the baton for the first ever concert of a new ensemble destined to become one of the world's great orchestras. The Wiener Philharmoniker 175th Anniversary Edition offers a hand-picked selection on 44 CDs of the best albums of the orchestra released on the label. Presented in a luxury box with matt lamination and hot-foil printed gold, the box includes original cover art, rare photographs from the Wiener Philharmoniker Archives as well as two new essays by Dr. Silvia Kargl, Head of the Historic Archive of the Vienna Philharmonic, and Richard Evidon. With a Bonus DVD of the famous 1989 New Year's Concert conducted by Carlos Kleiber.
The Radio Legacy is a compilation of the seven part Anthology of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the four box sets devoted to the orchestra s chief conductors Willem Mengelberg, Eduard van Beinum, Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Chailly, and also featuring more recent recordings with Mariss Jansons.
Gidon Kremer … his tone colour changing in chameleon fashion to match mood and style. He is wispy and wiry in the spare, fugal opening, but as the music blossoms into Straussian warmth, he plays with a creamy, ripe sweetness that could grace an old Hollywood weepy. Yet there is always clarity in the playing, a feeling for the contours of the music and where they are leading. –Tim Homfray, The Strad, about Kremer s Bartók Violin Concerto
“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.
I bought this shortly after my first visit to the Concertgebouw itself, when I was bowled over by the hall's superb acoustics and atmosphere. So these live broadcast recordings were pungent evocations of the experience. But even without that, this is a box worth having, if you can afford it. The first two discs alone are dynamite: a marvellously dramatic, idiomatic account of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle with Ivan Fischer and Hungarian soloists, followed by one of the best Mahler Fifths I've heard, from Tennstedt in 1990.
“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.