This Sony-made 30CD classical music collection covers almost all classical music, from the early Baroque period represented by Bach to the schools of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms represent romantic, national and even modern musical schools led by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, etc. representative, everything wonderful and vivid.
Phillips' Great Pianists of the 20th Century issue has gotten a lot of publicity in the ten or so years since it has been released. In a musical niche suffering from falling revenues, it was a decent seller. But it left many connoisseurs disappointed, as the quality was limited to the fancy packaging.
Arvo Part (born 11 September 1935; Estonian pronunciation: is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pдrt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from Gregorian chant.
Schittke's Concerto Grosso No. 3 was commissioned by the East German Radio in 1985 and on the occasion of five composers having notable anniversaries in a year ending with the number 85: Heinrich Schütz, who was born in 1585; Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Domenico Scarlatti, who were all born in 1685; and Alban Berg, who was born in 1885. This concerto was completed just before the onset of a series of strokes that affected him greatly for the rest of his creative life, marked by his Concerto for Three (1994).
If you were ever faced with having to own one–and only one–Alfred Schnittke CD, this would be an excellent choice. A collection with Seid Nüchtern und Wachet (better known as the Faust Cantata) as its anchor, this set also features inspired performances of the large, pulsing Ritual as well as a pair of additional large orchestral works: (K)ein Sommernachtstaum and Passacaglia. These are sprawling things, each invoking styles by the seeming dozens in blasts of energy. Schnittke's is a music of embarrassing riches, a palette he intentionally overfills in a self-consciously postmodern pastiche that speaks to the twin 20th-century Russian traditions of (in music) rich orchestration and (in politics) political repression. So it is that the Faust Cantata can weave between c. 16th-century texts and a very familiar liturgical choral style and a gut-busting set of solos that drive the piece to a frenzy.