Leonore

Over 175 hours of music, featuring recordings by over 250 of the greatest Beethoven performers, ranging from Karl Böhm to Alfred Brendel, Claudio Arrau to the Amadeus Quartet, Wilhelm Furtwängler to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Emil Gilels to John Eliot Gardiner, Wilhelm Kempff to Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin to Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Murray Perahia to Maurizio Pollini. Includes more than two hours of newly recorded music including several world premieres with Lang Lang, Daniel Hope and Tobias Koch. Over 30 discs of alternative recordings including historic performances and period instrument recordings. Limited & Numbered Edition.

Over 175 hours of music, featuring recordings by over 250 of the greatest Beethoven performers, ranging from Karl Böhm to Alfred Brendel, Claudio Arrau to the Amadeus Quartet, Wilhelm Furtwängler to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Emil Gilels to John Eliot Gardiner, Wilhelm Kempff to Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin to Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Murray Perahia to Maurizio Pollini. Includes more than two hours of newly recorded music including several world premieres with Lang Lang, Daniel Hope and Tobias Koch. Over 30 discs of alternative recordings including historic performances and period instrument recordings. Limited & Numbered Edition.

This Beethoven recording conducted by Daniel Harding is marked out mostly by its bristling, scintillating energy. Despite the brisk (but marvellous) "tempi", the interpretation here shows a great musical clarity alongside a subtlety of detail and beauty of sound. The fiery, apollonian character of these overtures is clearly stressed by this young conductor, and it is simply perfect! Take the "Leonore I" as an example… It (definitely) is the most thrilling recording I ever heard of this exciting work. Harding's personal choices of tempo and rubato seemed a natural part of the music onward flow. The entire set of overtures is remarkable for its consistency of interpretation! Forget Abbado, Barenboim or Gardiner - this is the definitive recording of Beethoven Overtures!

This video of Beethoven’s Fidelio was taped over four nights at the end of October, 2006 at the then year-old Palau de las Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain. The production inaugurated the opera house’s first official season, and a cast of international opera stars was called upon to take part under Zubin Mehta’s leadership in an evocative production by Pierluigi Pier’Alli… Mattila/Levine (DG)

Mayr's L'Amor coniugale belongs to a group of Mayr's operas in which the composer re-vitalised the Italian opera seria tradition. It belongs to the opera semi-seria genre, in which the flexible plot-driven opera buffa collides with the opera seria. It is a genre which we associate with Rossini but it was in fact Mayr who was influential in genre before Rossini. Mayr's musical language includes elements, such as the crescendo and characteristic rhythmic patterns, which Rossini would go on to make his own…
Robert Hugill

This release is the first of a ten-volume set of works conducted by legendary Michael Gielen. When it was announced on October 30, 2014 that Michael Gielen would no longer pursue conducting engagements because of health issues, it was decided that to honor this musician a detailed survey of his 50-year career would be made. Hence, the Michael Gielen EDITION was born. Volume 1, presented here, is a 6-disc set that presents works from Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert, recorded between 1967 and 2010.

Sony Classical presents a new reissue of all the recordings that Charles Munch, one of the most dynamic and charismatic conductors of the 20th century, made for RCA Victor while in Boston conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Munch turned the BSO into arguably the greatest French orchestra in the world while preserving its sovereignty in the American, Austro-German, central European and Russian repertoires. An 86-CD box set, The Complete Album Collection marks the first time that this cornerstone of the classical catalogue has been available in a single box with 16 works new to CD and 29 works newly remastered from the original analogue tapes. The new set also contain Munch s 1963 French-music compilation with the Philadelphia Orchestra for American Columbia.