Petra Lang

In the opening funeral movement, the rich and rock solid sound of the orchestra is quite ear-catching. To borrow some critic's word, it is 'beefy', a quality that is hard to find in Asian orchestras. Based on this and previous CD releases that feature Chung/SPO, it is clear that under maestro Chung's leadership the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra has grown into a world class ensemble with the unique sonority and high discipleship.

The epic tale of the fall of Troy haunted Berlioz from childhood and inspired some of his most passionately dramatic, richly colorful music. This is Colin Davis's second recording of Les Troyens, following his (out-of-print) 1969 version. Magnificent though it was, some reckoned that reading lacked something in zip. Here, however, such reservations could never apply. Recorded across several lavishly praised concert performances in London in December 2000, this Troyens has an extraordinary electricity and rhythmic drive.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra has a famous Mahler tradition, dating back to the composer's contemporary Willem Mengelberg. Chailly's 12-CD set of all 10 symphonies (including the last, completed by Deryck Cooke) will add to the lustre. Chailly recorded them over a decade, to a mixed reception. They are comparatively reticent and serious - "de-neuroticised", one reviewer put it - with an emphasis on the integrity of the overall structure rather than the immediate phrase.

Performances of the music of Richard Wagner will for many be associated with Ivбn Fischer's elder brother Adam who has conducted complete Ring cycles at Bayreuth & in Budapest. Those, however, who follow the concert schedules of Ivбn Fischer & his phenomenally hard working Budapest Festival Orchestra will know that they have performed the Wagner programme featured on this SACD – or variations on it - to great acclaim in many of the major European cities over the past couple of years.

One of the first, and best, recordings of this splendid but interpretatively elusive work was made in Berlin in 1954 under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay. Like the present recording, it featured the RIAS (Berlin Radio) Chamber Choir, though in those days the fledgling choir was supplemented in the full choruses by the famous St Hedwig’s Cathedral Choir. Now it is on its own, acquitting itself superbly in all movements and dimensions; what’s more, the conductor of the entire enterprise is its own conductor, the English-born Marcus Creed.

“I just heard your wonderful Sinfonietta: hope this is the beginning of your American success,” wrote Arnold Schönberg to Zemlinsky. But Zemlinsky was already suffering from the effects of a stroke and died alone in New York just a few days later. In his Sinfonietta, Op. 24 (1934) he reused a short theme from the last of his Maeterlinck-Songs, Op. 13 (1913), “Wohin gehst Du?” (Where are you going?), a theme of “self-doubts” and “farewell” from a time when Zemlinsky was beginning to observe growing anti-Jewish sentiments in Vienna. The Maeterlinck-Songs were praised as “the center of his output” by Theodor Adorno, and transport the listener to a mystic world concerned with life, evanescence and death.