Respighi Maazel

"Between 1972 and 1982 Maazel was Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra and between 1973-79 made a series of recordings for Decca – all of which are collected here. The repertory includes many orchestral spectaculars and Decca’s first recording in Cleveland, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, is one of the very best and a recording which has achieved reference status. “…. The precision of The Cleveland Orchestra is little short of miraculous… the recording is one of Decca’s most spectacular, searingly detailed but atmospheric too.” [The Penguin Guide]

In memoriam Maestro Maazel, Sony Classical re-releases the “Maazel Great Recordings” 30-CD Box to honour his great work. During his career, he conducted more than 150 orchestras in some 5,000 opera and concert performances. He served as general manager and artistic director at the Vienna State Opera and conducted the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, the first American to do so in both cases. He also served at the Radio Symphony of Berlin, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic.

"Between 1972 and 1982 Maazel was Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra and between 1973-79 made a series of recordings for Decca – all of which are collected here. The repertory includes many orchestral spectaculars and Decca’s first recording in Cleveland, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, is one of the very best and a recording which has achieved reference status. “…. The precision of The Cleveland Orchestra is little short of miraculous… the recording is one of Decca’s most spectacular, searingly detailed but atmospheric too.”

In memoriam Maestro Maazel, Sony Classical re-releases the ‘Maazel Great Recordings’ 30-CD Box to honour his great work.

Decca/London introduced Phase 4 Stereo in 1961. For classical music, the Phase 4 approach was based on miking every orchestra section individually, along with mics for selected instruments – up to a maximum of 20 channels, which were then mixed via a recording console. This resulted in a dynamic, in your face sound with relatively little hall ambience. The quality of the sound mostly depended on how skillfully the recording engineer balanced each channel – and the results were not always consistent. Thus, the Phase 4 sound was the antithesis of the minimally miked, “simplicity is wisdom” approach of the RCA’s early Living Stereo and Mercury’s Living Presence recordings, along with Telarc’s early digital recordings.

In 2014 Deutsche Grammophon celebrated the 20th anniversary of its flagship series, The Originals, with a limited edition collection featuring some of the labels greatest albums.
This second volume concludes the labels survey of its iconic series by presenting more legendary analogue albums. Including key recordings such as Beethovens Late Sonatas with Pollini, Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique with Markevitch, Brahmss Hungarian Dances with Karajan, Dvoraks New World with Fricsay, Chopin Preludes with Argerich…

In 2014 Deutsche Grammophon celebrated the 20th anniversary of its flagship series, The Originals, with a limited edition collection featuring some of the labels greatest albums.
This second volume concludes the labels survey of its iconic series by presenting more legendary analogue albums. Including key recordings such as Beethovens Late Sonatas with Pollini, Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique with Markevitch, Brahmss Hungarian Dances with Karajan, Dvoraks New World with Fricsay, Chopin Preludes with Argerich, Respighis Fontane & Pini di Roma with Karajan, Schuberts Great C major Symphony with Furtwängler, the Schumann Piano Concerto with Richter and Dichterliebe with Wunderlich, Stravinsky with Boulez, Verdi Choruses with Abbado and many more.

The Japanese company, BMG Japan, sorted the original RCA RED SEAL CDs according to the composers and the year when the music pieces were created. BEST100 series are the best representative CDs, which were carefully chosen from those music pieces by acting and recording, and they were released again with the mark of RCA BEST100. These CDs are the most impressive records in the classical field at RCA’s best. Theoretically, we could find the single originals of those CDs, but BMG Japan reorganised excellently for everyone. During BMG Japan period, it was released for the first time in 1999 and for the second time in 2008 after SONY took over BMG. BEST100 series belong to the latter.