This CD is a must-have for everyone who wants to gain an awareness of Czech music, its most frequently performed and most frequently recorded compositions.
5 April 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Herbert von Karajan, the legendary Austrian-born conductor who achieved a position of musical supremacy as director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra that made him one of the most famous and celebrated conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. While the majority of his symphonic recordings were made for Deutsche Grammophon, von Karajan also recorded for Decca and EMI during the 1950s and 1960s. This set is reissued to mark this momentous anniversary and contains all of his orchestral recordings made with the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca during the late 1950s/early 1960s.
The Karajan Official Remastered Edition comprises 13 box sets containing official remasterings of the finest recordings the Austrian conductor made for EMI between 1946 and 1984, which are now a jewel of the Warner Classics catalog. This 10-CD box unites orchestral, choral, and operatic performances recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when Karajan's talent was first nurtured by EMI's legendary producer Walter Legge. Gramophone has said that these recordings 'vividly capture their troubled times and transcend them.'
The New Year’s Concert live from Vienna is one of the world’s most famous and spectacular classical music events. It will be broadcast on TV and radio and reaches over 90 countries around the world with more than 40 million viewers. The live recordings from this event with works from the Strauss dynasty and their contemporaries are among the classical market's most important releases. After widely acclaimed New Years Concerts in 2006 and 2012, world-class conductor Mariss Jansons returns for the third time. He belongs to the circle of conductors with whom the Vienna Philharmonic feels a special bond and collaborates regularly.Mariss Jansons ranks among the outstanding podium personalities of our time.
The compact disc, as a sound carrier, was still on the horizon when Herbert von Karajan urged his record company to utilize the new digital technology in his recordings. Consequently Karajan's Magic Flute, recorded in 1980, became the first release of a Deutsche Grammophon digital production and was first released on LP. By the time the maestro died in 1989, the CD had finally replaced the LP as the primary sound carrier, yet he was realistic enough to know that the pioneering early stages of the digital era would be followed by further technical development. This is reflected in Karajan Gold. In this series the later development of the digital process that occurs after Karajan's death could be turned to the benefit of the Maestro's own recordings. Thirty releases from the early digital era were remastered for this series using DG's special Original-Image Bit-Processing technology. They were issued between 1993-1995.