Johannes Brahms 24 Bit

The Cleveland Orchestra is the "aristocrat among American orchestras" (The Telegraph), and the ensemble's music director Franz Welser-Most, leads them with verve and precision. These three discs from Belvedere (DVD and Blu-ray) feature six and a half hours of music, presenting a cycle of all the major orchestral works of Johannes Brahms. Included are the complete Symphonies and Piano Concertos, the Violin Concerto, the Tragic Overture, the Academic Festival Overture, and the Haydn Variations. Soloists include violinist Julia Fischer and pianist Yefim Bronfman.

Something new is always to be expected whenever Nikolaus Harnoncourt turns his attention to an important piece of music. In recent years he has been giving audiences a fresh view on some of the masterpieces of Romantic and late-Romantic music. His account of Brahms’ German Requiem is based on a thorough study of the composer’s ideas on how it should be performed.

What can you say about George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra? No other conductor and orchestra has ever turned in performances of such discipline and transparency of sound–not Karajan and Berlin, not Solti and Chicago–no one! In Brahms, where the natural thickness of the orchestral writing is always a peril, they never put a foot wrong. And all of this at budget price, too! Simply amazing."