Hungarian Marsch

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.

Franz Liszt was without doubt one of the greatest (if not The Greatest) pianists of all time, as well as an innovating and visionary composer, in one word…a Genius!

Franz Liszt was without doubt one of the greatest (if not The Greatest) pianists of all time, as well as an innovating and visionary composer, in one word…a Genius!

Decca presents the Complete Philips Recordings of Zoltán Kocsis on 26 CDs with the original jackets. Bringing together Kocsis' benchmark recordings of Bartók's solo piano works, acclaimed recordings of Bach's Art of Fugue, Chopin, Debussy and Dohnányi; Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Bartók concertos; a disc of piano transcriptions by Liszt and Kocsis of Wagner; and the first CD release of Greig's Sonata in E minor.

One of the most persistent questions that musicians ask themselves while practicing a piece is the inevitable query of how the composer himself might have performed his music. There are many written reports on how the old masters such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven may have played or improvised; and there are lines of teacher/pupil relationships which can trace their lineage back to the pianistic greats such as Liszt, but still we have to imagine the sound since we cannot actually hear it.

Ferenc Farkas (1905–2000) was one of the longest-lived members of the wave of Hungarian nationalist composers which began with the rise of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. A student of Ottorino Respighi in Rome, Farkas blended Respighi’s Latin melodiousness with the Magyar folk-heritage that Bartók and Kodály had made the central element of Hungarian music. His Old Hungarian Dances of the 17th Century have become a staple of the wind-quintet repertoire; the other five works on this disk display the same irrepressible joie de vivre.

This new collection of 55 CDs from the acclaimed audiophile label offers a wealth of recordings from the 1950s and 1960s in an unrivaled range of repertory. This ranges from solo Bach played by harpsichordist Rafael Puyana to American composer and conductor Howard Hanson in his own works as well as music by fellow-Americans. Key artists include Antal Dorati in works ranging from Beethoven to Bartok and Berg; Frederick Fennell, Rafael Kubelík, Paul Paray and Janos Starker.

Flowers we are …” brings together piano works by György Kurtág (born 1926) and György Ligeti (1923-2006), two of the most important and internationally successful composers of the post-war era who have one thing in common – Hungarian roots. The recording shows that the four-hand piano character piece also has musical significance and genre justification in contemporary music.