From 1947 to 1956 Ruggiero Ricci played on the 1734 Guarneri del Gesu "Ferni, Duc de Camposelice" and from 1956 to 1999 he usually played on the 1731 Guarneri del Gesu "Gibson, ex-Huberman, " which he purchased in 1977. For him the Guarneri sound (as opposed to Stradivari) was a matter of preference, able as it was to give the required brilliance, color and attack that he sought. Until 1981 he also owned violin Lorenzo Storioni c. 1779, with which he recorded the 6 Bach Solos on February 27-28, 1981. This 4-album set presents live and studio recordings, ranging from 1952 to 1986, including some rarities which have never been released commercially, like the Bartok Romanian Folk Dances, Bloch Violin Sonata No. 1, Prokofiev Violin Sonata No. 1, and Saint-Saens Violin Sonata No. 1 Op. 75.

Popular vocal and instrumental works and excerpts from the Baroque era through earlier 20th Century, all associated with the Winter season and Christmas. On 5 CDs.

Adam:
O Holy Night
Albinoni:
Adagio for Strings and Organ in G minor
Bach:
Air on the G string
Bruch:
Jubilate, Amen Op. 3
Bruckner:
Ave Maria
Corelli:
Concerto grosso Op. 6 No. 8 in G minor 'fatto per la notte di Natale'
Gabrieli, G:
Sacrae Symphoniae No. 2
Gounod:
Ave Maria
Grüber, F:
Stille Nacht
Handel:
Messiah: Pastoral Symphony 'Pifa'
Manfredini:
Concerto grosso in C major, Op. 3 No. 12 'per il Santissimo Natale'
Molter:
Concerto pastorale in G major
Mozart:
Laudate Dominum from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K339
Praetorius, M:
Kindelein zart von guter Art
Reger:
Mariä Wiegenlied, Op. 76 No. 52
Traditional:
Süsser die Glocken
O Jesulein Zart
Vivaldi:
The Four Seasons: Winter, RV297

Eric Satie, known as a brilliant pianist and composer, was an integral part of the 20th century Parisian avant-garde. Included in this box of Satie piano works are the Ogives, inspired by the Notre Dame cathedral; the hauntingly beautiful works of Trois Nocturnes, and the calming Reverie du Pauvre. Satie's compositional brilliance, along with Kormendi's virtuosity will surely make this a treasured item for collectors and classical music loves alike.

Giacomo Puccini is one of the most celebrated and beloved operatic composers that has ever lived. Included in this first installment of Puccini Operas are his breakthrough opera Manon Lescaut, his chef-d'oeuvre La boheme, and his controversial work Tosca. Opera enthusiasts will, without a doubt, relish in this essential collection of superb performances of Puccini's treasured operas. 1. Puccini: Manon Lescaut 2. Puccini: G.: Boheme (La) (Humburg) 3. Puccini: Tosca

Gregory Doran directs King and Country: Shakespeare's Great Cycle of Kings- the complete cycle of Richard II, Henry IV, Pts. 1 & 2, and Henry V. David Tennant plays the title role in Richard II, with Antony Sher and Jasper Britton as Falstaff and Henry IV respectively in Henry IV, Pts. 1 & 2. Alex Hassell follows his performance as Prince Hal in Henry IV, Pts. 1 & 2 as Henry V in the final play in the tetralogy.

"A definitive production of a great play" - Daily Mail on Richard II

"Gregory Doran's productions are a triumphant achievement." - Times on Henry IV, Pts. 1 & 2 Sound Format: 2.0LPCM, 5.1 DTS
Subtitles: EN/FR/GE (Except Henry V with EN only)
Region: 0 (Worldwide)
Running Time: 663 mins

These four Naxos American Classics releases selected for this Americana collection... focus on some of the defining moments of that history. First... a panorama of works inspired by Abraham Lincoln in defnitive performances conducted by Leonard Slatkin... Then Hannibal Lokumbe's rousing tribute to Rosa Parks... features the Detroit Symphony and the combined singers of two of Michigan's most venerable choruses. Next, Peter Boyer's dramatic account of the arrival of immigrants to Ellis Island in the early 20th century is narrated by an all-star cast including Eli Wallch and Olympia Dukakis. Finally, the first ever complete recordings of two film scores by Virgil Thomson for 1930s documentaries detailing the plight of rural Americans priot to the New Deal... " - Frank J. Oteri, NewMusicBox. Com

The unique quartet Carsten Dahl Experience was formed back in 2008 at a concert in Copenhagen Jazzhouse with high ambitions of musical interaction. As Dahl states: "My intentions aimed towards an orchestra where it could be possible to fly. We should be able to play on both a highly abstract level and compositionally tight, and to move within all spaces at once." All the Carsten Dahl Experience releases are now put together in this extraordinary box set. On the occasion of Carsten Dahl's 50th birthday in October, we also release a new live show as an album, taken from a sublime concert in Tobaksgaarden in Assens on 18th of September 2016. Here you will experience the four playmates: Carsten Dahl (piano), Jesper Zeuthen (sax), Nils "Bosse" Davidsen (bass) and Stefan Pasborg (drums), romping about in boundless experiments. The recordings contain brand new songs that represent the open and creative flow which these musicians always procure. The concert has an all-out magical vibe to it, and the unique tones of the Danish jazz superstars enchant the audience. Luckily, the music is now preserved for all to enjoy on CD. The “Live” release is also part of a box set released by Storyville, containg all five albums by the Carsten Dahl Experience. Look forward to fly off the ground with four highly intuitive musicians who communicate their musical visions with great intensity and a telepathic nerve.

Six CD Box set available only in North America of Jeremy Summerly's comprehensive conduting career. The work sets detailed are: 1. Adrian Willaert: Missa Christus resurgens / Magnificat / Ave Maria 2. Orlando di Lasso: Masses for Five Voices / Infelix ego 3. Thomas Tallis: Mass for Four Voices / Motets 4. Carlo Gesualdo: Sacred Music for Five Voices (Complete) 5. Hildegard Von Bingen: Heavenly Revelations 6. Artist Profile Series - SUMMERLY, Jeremy

Lorin Maazel (1930–2014) was perhaps the most interesting musician of his time. The very number of his engagements as Principal Conductor made him exceptional. After studying piano, violin, harmony, counterpoint and composition, and making his first appearances as a youthful conductor in the USA, where his family had moved from France in 1932, he played the violin in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and studied philosophy, economics, literature, French and Russian in his spare time. He went to Italy on a scholarship in the early 1950s, was repeatedly engaged – often by broadcasting stations – as a conductor, was the first American and at the same time the youngest conductor at the Bayreuth Festival when he conducted Lohengrin there in 1960, made his BBC concert debut with Mahler’s Second Symphony in London and directed the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin as its Principal Conductor (1964-75), was appointed General Music Director of the city’s Deutsche Oper (1965-71), then headed the Cleveland Orchestra (1972-82), the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988-96), Orchestre National de France (1988-90) and finally from 1993 the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio. He made his New York Met debut with Don Giovanni (1962) and debuted at the Salzburg Festival with The Marriage of Figaro (1963). He made a memorable appearance in London in 1988 when in a single day he performed all nine Beethoven symphonies with three different orchestras in aid of charity.

One of America's musical treasures, the United States Marine Band, gets plenty of time to shine on this box set featuring selections from their appearances on NPR's "Performance Today." Perfect for the 4th of July or anytime you're in the mood to feel patriotic, this box set is the musical version of the American flag!

After making her first solo piano LP recording in 1959 at the age of seventeen, Idil Biret had to wait nearly three decades before recording with an orchestra in a studio. In 1988 she recorded in London the 2nd and 4th Piano Concertos of Saint-Saens with the legendary Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by James Loughran. The Philharmonia Orchestra was established after WWII and employed extensively by another legend of music, the great producer Walter Legge, to make recordings for EMI/HMV. It was led by some of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century, such as Furtwangler, Toscanini, Richard Strauss, and Karajan. Many great pianists had recorded with this orchestra. During the next twenty-five years Biret made recordings of over sixty works for piano and orchestra in studio and at concerts under the baton of eminent conductors including Jean Fournet, Emil Tabakov, and Toshi Shimada. All of these have been released on Naxos and IBA under Naxos catalogue numbers. Additionally, live recordings of other piano concertos from Biret's concertos from 1954 onwards with eminent orchestras are available as well. All of the aforementioned are included in this enormous release.

GREAT VIOLIN CONCERTOS (10-CD Box Set)

The essence of a concerto is the contrast and combination of a solo instrument with a larger instrumental ensemble. Having developed out of the Baroque concept of concerto grosso, the concerto genre was fully established in the eighteenth century, and many works dating from this period are still a key part of the repertoire today. The opportunity for virtuosic display from the soloist has resulted in the concerto becoming a vital musical force on the concert platform.

The violin concerto owes a great deal of its development to the technical achievement of performers, and to this day many works are renowned for their fierce technical demands. Indeed, many composers who have written for the instrument were superlative players themselves—Wieniawski and Paganini among them. The fascinating history and capabilities of the instrument can be traced through the compositions contained herein; from the gossamer threads of Vivaldi to the exhilarating fireworks of Prokofiev, via the lilting swagger of Lalo and Saint-Saëns and nationalistic panache of Sibelius and Glazunov.

Reviews of some of the original recordings that make up this set:

Spohr: Concerto no 8
"Louis Spohr, once considered to hold a place among the greatest composers of his era, subsequently fell into a gray oblivion, only to be resurrected several times during the 20th century. Although his compositional output might have been more encompassing than those of many of his fellow violinist-composers, he may for practical purposes remain in contention principally for the honor of being one of the greatest of them rather than one of the greatest of composers in general.

The Eighth Concerto, written for Italian audiences, depends more heavily on Italianate forms and procedures. It’s soaring aria-like slow movement, its showy finale, and, most of all, its extended first movement recitative—all three encrusted with breathtaking ornamentation—provide a violinist with an ideal showcase. Heifetz, like Ethel Merman, could belt a tune in a way that defied audiences not to listen, and he played this Concerto, cutting down the tuttis, as he often did, with irresistible authority. Spohr denigrated Paganini’s manner of producing staccato off the string, and though Heifetz’s flying staccato, which he claimed to have had difficulty mastering, became one of his trademarks, he could electrify audiences with Spohr’s more solid staccatos on the string, so many passages of which adorn this Concerto. Albert Spalding’s recording of the work appealed to many who may have considered Heifetz’s a bit over the top, but it’s hardly as visceral; and, more recently, neither Uto Ughi (Dynamic 522, 31:1) nor Hilary Hahn (Deutsche Grammophon 000718802, 30:3) could recreate that magic. Though not nearly as confident as Heifetz, Lamsma still generates high voltage in, for example, the slow movement’s fast episode, and she plays with congenial sensitivity in the Adagio’s main sections. And unlike Heifetz, who succumbed to the temptation to add thirds to the last movement’s passages (as his teacher, Auer, did in Tchaikovsky’s cadenza to his Violin Concerto), she makes a case for it even while playing it straight. The Sixth Concerto’s misterioso returns enhanced in the 11th, which begins with an Adagio introduction that, if it’s not the Wolf’s Glen scene, may be the closest thing violinists have, and that introduces a main theme that postures squarely but stylishly as do some of Schumann’s melodic ideas. Warsop suggests that this Concerto might profitably be revived; it’s lucky that a sympathetic violinist like Lamsma has done so. Here’s a worthy counterpart to Bruch’s concertos (listeners might notice a similarity between the style of writing for the violin in Spohr’s concertos and in the first movement of Bruch’s Third) and a worthy champion. Listeners and would-be aficionados of Spohr may still find it a sort of stumbling block to full admiration that so many of Spohr’s harmonic turns and violinistic passages sound all too familiar—the 11th Concerto’s finale, for example, suggests, however obliquely, the Duo, op. 67/2. Violinist-composers have a notoriously hard time not following their fingers’ lead. Naxos’s program of Spohr concertos deserves a hearing for the young soloist’s’ bravado tempered with sensibility as well as for the orchestra’s generally sympathetic and competent accompaniment. But above all, it stands out for its version of the once famous Gesangszene, as it’s often called, perhaps the best after Heifetz’s—and, with Lamsma’s personal approach, a creditable alternative. Many violinists don’t have a sufficiently strong personality to project Spohr’s; Lamsma already does."

Paganini: Concerto no 1
"lya Kaler is a Russian virtuoso (born in Moscow in 1963), a pupil of Leonid Kogan and a very good player, too. Paganini's once fiendish pyrotechnics hold no terrors for him, not even the whistling harmonics, and how nicely he can turn an Italianate lyrical phrase, as in the secondary theme of the first movement of the First Concerto. Then he can set off with panache into a flying staccato, bouncing his bow neatly on the strings when articulating the delicious spiccato finales of both works. Stephen Gunzenhauser launches into the opening movements with plenty of energy and aplomb and is a sympathetic accompanist throughout—he is never heavy in orchestral writing that can easily sound vapid or stodgy...Kaler's intonation is above suspicion and he is naturally balanced: there is none of the scratchiness that can ruin one's pleasure in Paganinian pyrotechnics."

-- I.M., Gramophone

Dvorak and Glazunov Concertos
"Kaler’s playing of these Romantic, sweetly-tuned works is excellent. His technique copes more than adequately with the technical demands of the Glazunov, a composer considered bourgeois in post-1917 Russia and dealt an uncharitable blow here by a critic who said he led Russian music in a comfortable decline into ignominious mediocrity. Not so, his work deserves as high a profile as Dvorák’s whose concerto is sympathetically presented."

-- Christopher Fifield , BBC Music Magazine

Vieuxtemps: Concerto no 5
"Keylin...plays the concerto as a grand dramatic statement, with a largeness of conception that may not be altogether fashionable—but then, neither is the concerto, and there’s really no better way to play it if you’re going to play it at all. He takes advantage, as he does in all the concertos, of Vieuxtemps’s singing passages on all four strings, finding the appropriate individuality for each on the 1715 Baron Knoop Stradivari, lent to him for the performances. If his passagework lacks Heifetz’s or Kogan’s effortlessness, his sense of the pieces’ perfect adaptation to their medium, together with his big sound and serious approach to works all too often dismissed as trivial, make adequate amends."

-- Robert Maxham, Fanfare