LEGENDARY STRAUSS RECORDINGS

BERLITZ PASSPORT - THE MUSIC O

On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ives - acclaimed by his champion Leonard Bernstein as the "first great American composer", who, "all alone in his Connecticut barn, created his own private musical revolution" - Sony Classical presents the most authoritative recording collection ever released of works by this eccentric, prophetic genius.

The 5-CD box set Charles Ives - The Anniversary Edition is a unique and provocative introduction only released previously 50 years ago on LP by Columbia Masterworks under the art direction of Henrietta Condak to celebrate Ives's centenary.

The first disc examines "The Many Faces of Charles Ives" through eight diverse works recorded between 1964 and 1970: Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in The Fourth of July and The Unanswered Question; General William Booth Enters into Heaven, one of Ives's towering achievements, and The Circus Band are performed by the Gregg Smith Singers; baritone Thomas Stewart sings the moving song In Flanders Fields; organist E. Power Biggs plays Ives's Variations on "America"; composer Gunther Schuller conducts The Pond for chamber orchestra; and the Largo cantabile Hymn is performed by the New York String Quartet and double bass player Alvin Brehm. CD 2, "The Celestial Country", offers Ives's early cantata by that name, composed in 1897-99 for his conservative Yale composition teacher Horatio Parker. It is sung by the Gregg Smith Singers (accompanied by the Columbia Chamber Orchestra), who also perform arrangements of four of Ives's most powerful patriotic songs with the American Symphony Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski conducting. "The Things Our Fathers Loved", CD 3, contains 25 of Ives's songs, delivered by the soprano Helen Boatwright, who specialized in American song. She is partnered by John Kirkpatrick, who studied and worked closely with Ives and is still regarded as the most authoritative interpreter of his piano music. Gramophone in 1974 praised this famous recording as "the finest selection ever to appear" on LP of "what may well turn out to be considered his most important, characteristic and consistently inspired body of music."

Few conductors of Klaus Tennstedt's generation demonstrated such complete mastery of the Classical and Romantic repertoire from Beethoven to Mahler and Strauss, coupled with an intensity in live performance that was palpable. He was among the finest German conductors to emerge after the Second World War and was in constant demand with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic the Boston Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic. Doremi's fourth volume of live concert material of Klaus Tennstedt features the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's fourth and fifth symphonies, Don Quixote by Richard Strauss (with cellist Lorne Monroe) and Boris Blacher's Paganini Variations; also included is the same composer's Concertante Musik with the Chicago Symphony.

A live performance of Rilke Songs with the same performers was the winner of a 2008 Grammy for "Best Vocal Recording" (BRIDGE9178). The present never-before issued studio version of the songs, was recorded in 2005. Also on this disc is the premiere recording of Lieberson's Piano Quintet, played by Serkin and the Orion String Quartet, the dedicatees of this work.

Herbert von Karajan during the Fifties live performed several times Beethoven Symphonies the German conductor would have recorded in studio for EMI a little later. Many Karajan performances were made in various countries and thanks to the collectors these recordings were saved and now after seventy years they are still available. That’s the case of these two Beethoven Symphonies conducted by Karajan the first one in New York in 1958 and the second in Tourin in 1954 and now re-presented on modern format after having carefully digitally remastered. This IDIS new release is an amazing testimony of Karajan work who gained always the best from any orchestra he conducted.