C.P.E. Bach eclipsed his legendary father s fame to become the mid-18th century s leading German composer. This wide-ranging collection of symphonies, concertos and vocal works by the great forerunner of Haydn and Mozart is performed by authoritative interpreters including Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert. The evident delight of the musicians in this music makes for rewarding listening … Impressive and fascinating.

45 years after his debut Philips recording of Beethoven’s 9th, Seiji Ozawa returns to this epic masterpiece. The Mito Chamber Orchestra features many international star players including Radek Baborák (horn), Ricardo Morales (clarinet) and Philippe Tondre (oboe). The German baritone Markus Eiche leads a quartet of leading Japanese soloists and the Tokyo Opera Singers in a fascinating performance on a chamber orchestra scale.

Soli Deo Gloria is proud to release the last instalment of its successful Brahms Symphony series which sees John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique explore the music of Johannes Brahms. This album is a celebration of the Fourth Symphony and the various pieces that contributed to its making.

Soli Deo Gloria is proud to release the third instalment in the successful Brahms Symphony series which sees John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique explore the music of Johannes Brahms.

For this release on Tafelmusik Media, Bruno Weil and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir perform Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "Choral," in a streamlined presentation notable for its authentic instrumentation and historically informed performance practice. The hallmarks of Classical style are immediately apparent, from the brisk tempos and the reduced size of the orchestra, to the straight, vibrato-less string tone and the distinctive and occasionally raw timbres of early 19th century woodwinds and brass. (Note especially the contrabassoon, track four, at the 09:36 mark.) Yet all of this is secondary to the effectiveness of the music, which Weil and his musicians keep uppermost in their minds.

It seems that Gary Bertini, like Gustav Mahler, is destined to be better remembered after his death than he was known during his life. When he passed away in 2005, he was little known outside Israel, Japan and continental Europe and nowhere near as widely recognised as the glamour conductors who appear on the пїЅmajorпїЅ labels. His recordings were few and hard to find. A year after his passing, Capriccio has launched a Gary Bertini Edition (see, for example, review) featuring live recordings drawn from the archives of the KпїЅlner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, and EMI has re-released his Mahler cycle.

After the critical success of the first volume of Beethoven's symphonies, Jordi Savall offers us Symphonies Six to Nine. This latest publication crowns a nearly two-year world tour and confirms the extent to which the Savall renews our vision of these most famous works. The Concert des Nations shows that it also knows how to magnify the repertoire of the early 19th century.

Maazel's mid-Eighties Mahler cycle was a prestige project, the first time that the august Vienna Phil. had ever recorded all nine symphonies. It's generally acknowledged that they play gloriously and that Sony provided vivid digital sound. As for Maazel, his notions are never less than unusual, so it can be said that his Mahler is like no one else's.

David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich have received extraordinary praise for their polished recordings of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, and kudos will surely greet the appearance of the Symphony No. 8 in E flat major, the most ambitious work of the cycle and the greatest challenge to a conductor's ability to marshal several ensembles into one immense entity. Hallmarks of Zinman's earlier Mahler recordings and RCA's superb engineering are the crispness and clarity of details, and the ensemble sound is exquisitely balanced between the chamber groupings within sections and the towering orchestral climaxes.

Of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, the Symphony No. 4 in G major is the most neo-Classical in character, the most lighthearted in expression, and the most compact in form, all of which make it the most accessible of the cycle. Because Mahler's effects are precisely calculated, the music invites few liberties, and performances of the symphony tend to be quite similar in style and pacing; consequently, David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich turn in a meticulous rendition that resembles many others in interpretation and is uncontroversial in execution.

David Zinman’s Mahler cycle really hits its stride with this remarkable performance of the Third Symphony. It only has two small drawbacks worth mentioning. First, alto Birgit Remmert sounds pretty good in her big fourth-movement solo, but she’s far less impressive during her brief contributions to the choral fifth movement. Perhaps this take came from another evening (the symphony was recorded during a series of live performances). Second, at the very end of the symphony, despite the very beautiful playing, the trumpets fail to ring out as Mahler’s score directs. Better this glowing sonority than stridency, but there’s no reason why we can’t have the best of both worlds (Haitink’s first recording with the Concertgebouw on Philips never has been surpassed in this respect).

Zinman's Resurrection is the second release in Mahler's complete series of works for this conductor with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. His Beethoven, Schumann, and Richard Strauss discs for Arte Nova have been a resounding success. The appearance of these Mahler discs on a full-priced label suggests that Sony-BMG Masterworks appreciates their potential to be the definitive Mahler recordings of the current decade.

The performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony by "Emperor" Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker on October 21, 1979 was broadcast live nationwide from the venue on NHK. was broadcast on FM. This recording is the first digital recording of NHK, a historic one, and was handed down as a masterpiece of the peak of both Karajan / Berlin Philharmonic. The tremendous concentration invites listeners into an overwhelming impression. This time, the world's first CD release of this famous performance has been realized! At the time of its release, the latest remastering technology that Deutsche Grammophon boasts has been used to improve the sound quality astonishingly, and it has been revived.

Lobgesang, Mendelssohn's ''Hymn of Praise'', is no longer a rarity on disc, with a dozen versions listed. That makes it timely that Spering, following up the success of Herreweghe's Harmonia Mundi version of Elijah (4/94), here presents a performance in period style. When the composer's preference for fast speeds is well documented, and has so convincingly been followed up by his latterday successor at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Kurt Masur, it is perhaps surprising that Spering is far more relaxed in his choice of tempos. His overall timing—64'48'' as against Masur's 58'32''—shows what a wide discrepancy there is, and in no way does he let the music drag or become sentimental. For with clean, crisp textures this is a most refreshing performance, full of incidental beauties, of a work that for several generations was regarded as too sweet on the one hand, over-inflated on the other. Spering's clean directness and his obvious affection for the music reverses that jaundiced judgement.

After a period-instrument reading of the Symphony no.1 that received unanimous acclaim from the critics, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles return to Mahler. Joined by the luminous voice of Sabine Devieilhe for the famous finale, they offer us their vision of the Fourth Symphony, which in its own way marks the composer’s transition to modernity, and reveal unsuspected colours and instrumental balances. We still have much to learn about the polyphonic transparency possible within Mahler’s big orchestra!