Rachmaninoff Sacd

Great pianist as he undoubtedly is, Arcadi Volodos is a cool customer, particularly when it comes to Tchaikovsky. Clearly in no hurry to record, he avoids all tub-thumping Romantic rhetoric and nonchalantly bypasses every difficulty with an ease that can leave you open-mouthed. For his stream of seven Rachmaninov encores Volodos, almost as if released from a pleasant if over-familiar task, allows his playing to blossom with an altogether fuller fragrance and expansiveness.

Great pianist as he undoubtedly is, Arcadi Volodos is a cool customer, particularly when it comes to Tchaikovsky. Clearly in no hurry to record, he avoids all tub-thumping Romantic rhetoric and nonchalantly bypasses every difficulty with an ease that can leave you open-mouthed. For his stream of seven Rachmaninov encores Volodos, almost as if released from a pleasant if over-familiar task, allows his playing to blossom with an altogether fuller fragrance and expansiveness.

The RCO's performance history of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony is strangely uneven. Already three years after its completion the symphony was performed by Willem Mengelberg in a program that also boasted the composer as soloist in his own Piano Concerto No. 3. After that the symphony was on the program once more in 1921 and then there's a gap of 59 years. From 1980 on no less than ten conductors (including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kirill Kondrashin and Kurt Sanderling) put it on the RCO's music stands. The latest RCO incarnation proved to be an ideal performance. With Mariss Jansons at the helm, mind and heart of this piece are totally balanced and the opulence of the RCO's sound at the Concertgebouw iss perfectly suited to Rachmaninoff's most beloved symphony.

Mariss Jansons joins one of the greatest Mahler traditions in the world with his first album leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on a Mahler symphony. For this 2005 live recording, Jansons and the RCO provide a superbly impressive performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, one of the greatest and most dramatic of Mahler’s works. The programme also includes the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Sebastian im Traum.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and chief conductor Mariss Jansons have a long and cherished history performing the music of Gustav Mahler, whose compositions have become a staple of the RCO's repertoire. These live recordings of Mahler's majestic Symphony No. 5 are drawn from concerts presented in late 2007 and early 2008, commemorating the 120th anniversary of the RCO's first performance. On this album Jansons underscores more than ever the symphony's narrative, poetic side.

For the second installment of their Rachmaninoff symphonies cycle for EMI, Vasily Petrenko and his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra cover the most popular and significant of the corpus, the Second Symphony in E minor. Also to the disc added the three delightful fragments from Rachmaninoff's early opera Aleko (1892) – The Women's Dance, Intermezzo and the Men's Dance – are offered as appetizer.

From the heyday of Svyatoslav Richter, all the concertos recorded by DG from 1958 to 62 were assembled into 3 pieces (except Disc 3, these are 1st time on SACD). Features the works by Robert Schumann, W.A. Mozart, Sergey Prokofiev, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninov & P.I. Tchaikovsky. This is a Sviatoslav Richter's special collaboration with Wittold Lovitki, Kurt Sanderling, Herbert von Karajan, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, etc. Features the new mastering from the original analogue master tapes.