Sviatoslav Richter was one of the greatest interpreters of the 20th century. Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata was one of the main features of Richter's programming in the summer of 1975 in Prague London and Aldeburgh. This is the first time that this London recital has been issued commercially on CD in an authorized version and it is remastered here in excellent stereo.

Sviatoslav Richter’s comment that Hungarian-born Annie Fischer (1914–1995) was ‘a great artist imbued with a spirit of greatness and genuine profundity’ is just a sign of the esteem in which her fellow musicians held her. Curiously, of all the mid-century pianists, she seems to have been among the least recorded due to her profound dislike of the studio. Annie Fischer’s ‘unerring awareness’ (David Threasher) of the shifting moods in the Schumann Piano Concerto has been caught in wonderful sound by the WDR engineers in this ‘live’ recording which has never been issued before. In the two Beethoven works, ‘she is powerfully authoritative’ (David Threasher). Both these ‘live’ recordings are available for this first time on this release. All these recordings are great additions to her relatively small discography.

Rob Cowan wrote in Gramophone about the first volume featuring Sir Thomas Beecham: 'numerous live Beecham releases have appeared over the last few years, some more successful than others (in both recording and performance terms), but this collection is certainly one of the best.' This second volume continues with rare performances which as far as is known have never been made available before covering a period from 1952 to 1959. French music was a favorite of Beecham and this set is made up of music by Chabrier, Franck, Gretry, Lalo, Mehul and Saint-Saens, all of which he recorded in the studio but when Beecham was caught 'live,' it often showed the mercurial side of his character and no performance was ever the same. As David Patmore said in an essay: 'What Beecham sought at all times was freshness and his unpredictability was one way of achieving this.' The Franck is played for all it's worth while the Mehul, rather than being performed as a period performance, is treated as a romantic composer in a big-boned approach. The Lalo Symphony with the RPO has a greater intensity than the French studio recording which came a few months later.

William Steinberg (1899–1978), a native of Cologne who spent almost all his career in the USA, was known principally as Music Director of the Pittsburg Symphony and also as the distinguished Music Director of the Boston Symphony at the end of his career. He was celebrated as an orchestra builder, co-founding the Palestine Orchestra which became the Israel Philharmonic as well as helping one of his mentors, Arturo Toscanini, to form the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Steinberg’s recording of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis has never been issued before on CD and is in excellent stereo.

This 1992 concert includes Tchaikovsky's Manfred; tghe Pas de Deux from Nutcracker Act 2; Elgar's "Nimrod" variation from the Enigma Variations and Prokofiev's Death of Tybalt from "Romeo & Juliet".

Born in Tokyo in 1999, Mone Hattori came from a musical family. After studies in Japan with Auguri Suzuki and Yasuko Ohtani she made her concerto debut aged eight, and enrolled in Zakhar Bron's prestigious Academy in Interlaken, Switzerland. At age 10, Hattori became the youngest ever winner of the Karol Lipinski/Henryk Wieniawski Competition. Her debut recording featuring Franz Waxman's virtuoso showpiece Carmen-Fantasie is technically brilliant as well as being a rarity on record. The work is part of Waxman's score to the 1946 movie Humoresque which received an Academy Award. It was initially meant to be played by Jascha Heifetz but he was replaced by Isaac Stern for the film soundtrack. After seeing the film, Heifetz asked Waxman to expand the work and it was premiered on September 1946. Shostakovich's magnificent Violin Concerto No. 1 completes the album, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester under conductor Alan Buribayev. The album was released in Japan earlier, and received enthusiastic reviews: "I was reminded of the debut of Hilary Hahn... her outstanding talent really comes across clearly... listening to her play Shostakovich's great cadenza, I'm sure I am not the only one who felt a shiver run down their spine." (Stereo Review)

Classical Music

Boult was very closely associated with Elgar's music throughout his career and recorded the Second Symphony five times. This live Proms performance recorded in stereo from 1977 'shows Boult in his late 80s working with the passion and energy of a much younger man' (Martin Cotton). His relatively fast tempi are closer to his first recording made in 1944 with the BBCSO. The Overture and Venusberg music from Wagner's Tannhauser are a new addition to the Boult discography and come from a live studio performance in stereo from the Maida Vale Studios in 1968. These are world premier recordings.

Susanne Hou was a scholarship student at Toronto’s Conservatory of Music followed by the Juilliard School under Dorothy DeLay, Cho-Liang Lin and Naoko Tanaka. She rose to fame on the international concert scene when she unanimously won the Long-Thibaud, Lipizer and Sarasate International Violin Competitions. Since then she has collaborated with world-renowned conductors and fellow artists such as Rostropovich, Zuckerman, Alan Gilbert, Spivakov, and more. Susanne has twice collaborated with the Oscar nominated director Atom Egoyan and the Oscar winning composer Mychael Danna. She has her own music video The Devil’s Delight. Of particular poignancy is the fact that Susanne Hou’s father Bo Zhi Hou was the top violinist at the Shanghai Conservatory at the time this concerto was written, going on to lead major orchestras in China before and during the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Hou was asked to make the world premiere recording of the Butterfly Lover’s Concerto but, due to sensitive political and societal circumstances, he ultimately left the country without having had the opportunity to make the recording. He therefore now passes the torth of his legacy in China, and his unfulfilled destiny of recording The Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto, to his daughter- Susanne Hou.

The violist and conductor, Rudolf Barshai is considered one of the great Russian musicians of the 20th century and his emigration to the West allowed for greater global exposure and marked a second chapter to his creative life. On the occasion of the 5th anniversary of his death, this monumental 20 CD box set is a unique homage to the legacy of Barshai featuring never-before-published radio and studio recordings along with live concerts from 1951 to 2012, many of his viola recordings along with his famous Mahler Symphony Nr. 10 with an ending scored by Barshai, and much much more. Also including a 49 page booklet of rare photographs and accompanying essays.

Recorded in 1971 the film on this DVD is taken from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in the same year: their first ever concert outside America. This is the first release of this material on DVD and is the first in a series of Sir Georg Solti/CSO releases to come from ICA Classics to celebrate Solti's centenary.

The highly distinguished conductor Rudolf Kempe (1910-1976) started as an oboist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. During the Second World War, he was chief conductor of the Chemnitz Opera until 1946. He then worked at Weimar for the 1948-9 season, before joining the Dresden Opera and becoming chief conductor. From 1952 to 1954, he was chief conductor of the Bavarian State Opera, which he conducted at Covent Garden in 1953 to great acclaim. Mahler's Symphony No.4 is a new addition to the Kempe discography. The recording, which was discovered in the Music Preserved archive in York, is a real rarity. Similarly, Mendelssohn's Ruy Blas Overture is a new addition to the conductor's discography. It is heard here in a fiery performance captured live from the Royal Festival Hall in 1967 with the LSO. Kempe's account of the Prelude to Act I of Wagner's Parsifal, recorded in 1965, confirms his status as one of the greatest Wagnerian conductors of the 20th century. His Covent Garden performances of Parsifal in 1959 were landmarks for the company.

This new release from ICA Classics presents the first recording of Antonio Pappano conducting Elgar with his Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. For this program, Elgar’s First Symphony is paired with his Concert Overture ‘In the South,’ which was inspired by the conposer’s holiday in Alassio during 1903-1904. Both of these works had been out of the orchestra’s repertoire for more than a century until Pappano stated that he was “on a mission to bring this music back to its place of birth,” knowing that his performers had “natural Italianate passion and lyricism,” which would be perfect for these works. Pappano’s 2012 London season opened with Elgar. Reviewers had only positive things to say: “…His surging striving account caught all the nervous energy of this elegia work… Now he should take the symphony… to his own orchestra [in Rome].”

Charles Munch conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Barbirolli made two earlier recordings of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique in 1947 (mono) and 1958 (early stereo), both with the Halle Orchestra. This new live recording with the SWF orchestra in Baden-Baden from 1969 is in state-of-the-art stereo sound and does full justice to Berlioz's wonderful score. Likewise, Haydn's Symphony No.83 the Hen always remained a Barbirolli favorite. He first recorded it in 1949 in mono but here it is captured in excellent stereo 20 years later and released in 2013 for the first time.