Shostakovich Edition

This is the perfect set for anyone who loves Shostakovich, or anyone just finding out about Shostakovich who wants to easily get all his major works. Included are the complete symphonies, including the chamber symphonies, a few discs of suites and film music, all six concertos, the complete string quartets, and three discs of assorted chamber music.

Fans of Leonard Bernstein will not want to miss the chance to snap up this limited edition 60-CD set, Bernstein Symphony Edition. With a list price of just over two dollars per disc, it's a bargain not to be missed. What's most impressive about these recordings of well over 100 symphonies made between 1953 and 1976, almost all of which feature the New York Philharmonic, is the scope and depth of Bernstein's repertoire.

This audio complement to "A History of Western Music" includes recordings of all the works appearing in "The Norton Anthology of Western Music". As in the previous edition, the recordings are of the highest quality and are performed by outstanding groups and soloists. New track references in the textbook allow students to locate the recorded works on the CD set as they read the corresponding discussions in the text. The collection features 20 new works, plus an additional 14 new recordings of works included in the previous edition

The conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky was never a predictable artist on disc and his hottest performances could easily power the national grid. Such is the intensity of at least two Shostakovich performances that turn up in Brilliant Classics’s Gennady Rozhdestvensky Edition. I cannot recall ever hearing a more confrontational account of the Ninth Symphony than the one Rozhdestvensky gave with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra on December 21, 1982, the work’s cheerful, rather sardonic “not-a-ninth-symphony” spirit suddenly pushed to the edges of irony and at times sounding positively sadistic, the first and last movements in particular. A very extreme case of “what he really meant”, whether or not you agree.

Sonata for Violoncello and Piano No. 2 op. 63 (1959): The famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich became acquainted with Weinberg through the agency of Shostakovich, who wrote his First Cello Concerto for this much sought-after artist in 1959. Weinberg’s Second Cello Sonata, written at the same time, may have been a response to Shostakovich’s piece, although he always stressed his artistic independence from the elder master. Rather, these two figures were connected by a fruitful dialogue. They showed each other their new works for appraisal and drew mutual inspiration from each other…..

In the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Itzhak Perlman has been acclaimed as being among the leading violinists before the public, and, without doubt, has been the most visible of them in media venues, from recordings and radio broadcasts to television and film appearances. No other concert violinist and few other serious musicians have achieved the widespread exposure and popularity attained by Perlman.

Dmitri Shostakovich is best known for his symphonies and string quartets, which paint him as a very serious composer, indeed. But he was also one of the most prolific film composers of the 20th century, with almost 40 films for which he wrote the music and which span virtually his entire professional career. It’s a fascinating panoply that shows Shostakovich from several different perpectives as he adapted to the changing shape and policies of the Soviet state. Shostakovich never took composing lightly and the musical merits of the frequently overlooked film scores are always impeccable. 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. This box set is a physical release only.