Limited 30 CD set. A violinist of outstanding accomplishment and integrity, Frank Peter Zimmermann has for decades sustained achievement at the highest level as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. As the New York Times has written, "Mr. Zimmermann's style is based on an absolutely clean technique and a true ability to let music unfold and develop at a natural pace." Before recording any work in his repertoire, from essential masterpieces to intriguing rarities, Zimmermann has taken time to understand and define the meaning of every note in the context of his interpretation. As a consequence, each of these 30 albums - originally the fruit of his long collaboration with EMI Classics (and Teldec) - bears witness to the grace, insight and authority of his playing.

Vaughan Williams: New Collector Edition (150th Anniversary. Of Birth Oct 12) - WARNER CLASSICS - Celebrated as the musical poet of the English landscape, Vaughan Williams was also a visionary composer of enormous range: from the pastoral lyricism of The Lark Ascending and the still melancholy of Silent Noon to the violence of the Fourth Symphony and the grand ceremonial of All people that on earth do dwell, he assumed the mantle of Elgar as our national composer. This edition presents all the major orchestral, chamber, vocal and stage works, as well as many lesser pieces and rarities, in the finest interpretations. All your favourite Vaughan Williams is here, in over 34 hours of music on 30 CDs.

Winner of the Leeds Piano Competition at the age of just twenty, Rafael Orozco exemplified a new generation of virtuoso pianists who favoured musical expression over spectacular display. His Chopin interpretations were truly revelatory, finding poetry not only in the Pr�ludes but also in the �tudes. Remastered from the original tapes in 24-bit/192kHz, this double album captures the rare occurrence of a Spanish pianist tackling two all-encompassing collections in which the essence of Romanticism is distilled - a precious souvenir of the impeccable artistry of a star of late twentieth-century pianism.

ABEL SELAOCOE / WHERE IS HOME? - WARNER CLASSICS - South African cellist Abel Selaocoe makes his debut on Warner Classics with Where is Home (Hae Ke Kae). It's dual title, in English and Sesotho, reflects the album's diverse program which draws from vibrant European and African influences: pieces inspired by South African and Tanzanian musical tradition share a space with works by J.S. Bach and Giovanni Benedetto Platti, some of which are renewed with instrumental and lyrical improvisations. The title of the album holds multifaceted significance for the Manchester-based musician: "Home is the place that empowers you; it's not only a geographical place but in people as well, where you can live a life of empowerment and not of oppression. I've learned to find my different homes through the cello." Abel Selaocoe represents Africa on the move.

Piazzolla - what a journey! His music has so many sides to it. Throughout his life he was exposed to such a rich and varied stream of influences. This homage to Piazzolla, while of course including compositions by him, also references those influences (here I'm thinking of Nadia Boulanger and Alberto Ginastera, with whom he studied). Piazzolla's output is rich not only in terms of the styles he explored but also the different instrumental ensembles he played with. I was keen to reflect this eclecticism by way of a number of different line-ups: trumpet solo, with orchestra, with string quartet, and as duet partner." (...) I would also like to thank my two guest artists: Thibaut Garcia, for his wonderful guitar playing and his friendship and the great Richard Galliano for being with us. It was very moving to perform his Tango pour Claude alongside him.

Alain Lef�vre is a story-teller. A story-teller who uses the piano to play a multitude of roles. These characters perform the chapters of an imaginary novel set to music in which the author let's us discover for ourselves how the story ends.

This recording of the BBC's broadcast of the coronation service from Westminster Abbey was taken by means of a direct line to Abbey Road Studios in St John's Wood, London. The splendid ritual of the coronation rite has offered to composers of succeeding generations an opportunity to provide music of fitting beauty and to the choirs taking part an incentive to excel in presenting music in which Britain has a rich and unique tradition. Some of this music had been heard in earlier coronations, some was composed especially for this occasion. Old and new were woven into the fabric of the ceremony with great skill, and the recording provides a sound-picture representing some five centuries of the finest of English church music. The Coronation Choir was a large one of over four hundred singers, the voices, with the exception of a few sopranos and contraltos from the Commonwealth, being those of men and boys. Certain famous choirs were present in full force, having a prescriptive right to sing at the coronation. Among these were the choirs of Westminster Abbey, HM Chapel Royal, St George's Chapel, Windsor, and St Paul's Cathedral; the remaining singers were drawn from choirs throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland with a considerable number of 'additional' altos, tenors, and basses who were well known soloists or who at some time had been members of famous choirs. As each member of these choirs was thoroughly at home with church music of every degree of difficulty, the resultant tone was of singular beauty: rich, majestic and of great flexibility. The accompaniments were shared by the fine organ of the abbey and a full orchestra made up of eminent soloists and of players nominated from leading orchestras. The special fanfares, composed by Sir Ernest Bullock, were played by massed trumpeters from the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, under their conductor Lt-Col Meredith Roberts MBE MVO. The choral music was conducted by Dr William McKie, organist and choirmaster of Westminster Abbey, assisted by Dr John Dykes Bower and Dr W.H. Harris, and the organ was played by Dr Osborne. H. Peasgood.

ROMANTIC PIANO MASTERS - MARIAM BATSASHVILI - WARNER CLASSICS - "Through Batsashvili, Liszt speaks to a new generation," Pianist magazine has written. Liszt takes pride of place on Mariam Batsashvili's second Warner Classics album, primarily devoted to evocative, technically formidable piano transcriptions of opera, song and organ music. Among the works are Liszt's realisations of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, a spectacular take on Bellini's opera La sonnambula from Liszt's great rival, Sigismund Thalberg, and Harold Bauer's adaptation of C�sar Franck's Pr�lude, Fugue et Variation. Speaking of Liszt, Mariam Batsashvili says: "Whether he was making transcriptions of operatic arias or art songs, he set out to evoke the feelings of the original work's dramatic and poetic worlds without any exaggeration, and in my view he succeeded in this with great strength and truth."

Hilary Hahn/Andr�s Orozco-Estrada/Frankfurt Radio Symphony - "Eclipse" - Hilary Hahn's latest album, Eclipse, celebrates the power of authenticity. Recorded with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and it's Music Director (2014-2021), Andr�s Orozco-Estrada, it sees the triple Grammy-winning violinist deliver interpretations of three works charged with universal emotions yet rooted in their composers' musical heritage: Dvor�k's Violin Concerto, Ginastera's Violin Concerto, a strikingly original 20th-century gem, and Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy.

Each of the five members of wind 'supergroup' Les Vent Fran�ais, partnered by pianist Eric le Sage, plays a sonata written by Paul Hindemith in the dramatic years between 1936 and 1943 - compact, lucid and engaging works for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and alto horn. "These Hindemith sonatas are a great asset to the wind repertory," says oboist Fran�ois Leleux. "Hindemith took a very particular approach to each instrument, with a wonderful sense for it's individual sound."

Warner Classics - Schubert: The Complete Piano Sonatas, Wanderer Fantasy - Elisabeth Leonskaja Eight CD set. These very recent recordings by Elisabeth Leonskaja, released on her label a few years ago, have been bought by Warner Classics at the occasion of her new signing as a Warner Classics artist.

Shaped by pianist Andrew von Oeyen's experience of lockdown, this solo recital comprises Bach's eight-movement Overture in the French Style BWV 831, Beethoven's Piano Sonatas No 13 in E flat and No 23 in F minor, 'Appassionata', and arrangements by Wilhelm Kempff of two movements that Bach wrote for accompanied flute. "Perhaps more than any other composer, Bach expresses the clearest sense of order in a chaotic world," says von Oeyen. "If Bach served as my first musical mooring in confinement, I returned to Beethoven for second-wave pandemic relief... I was now ready to weigh anchor and face the storm in the company of stalwart and indestructible 19th century sonatas. Crises, for all their destructiveness, can also lead to renewal and discovery."

In their first Warner Classics release of symphonic repertoire, the players of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and their Chief Conductor Michael Sanderling perform the four Brahms Symphonies and Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor. Founded in 1805, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (Luzerner Sinfonieorchester) is Switzerland's oldest orchestra. As Sanderling points out, Brahms made two visits to Lucerne.The location of Switzerland's central city, creates a link with Brahms," says Sanderling.It's proximity to the mountains, it's position on beautiful Lake Lucerne.. I can hear that in Brahms' symphonic music. I can hear his love for nature.. The purity of the air. And in his Symphony No 1, I think we can all hear the sound of the alphorn, which Brahms heard for the first time in Switzerland and which inspired the gorgeous theme [of the symphony's fourth movement]." Sanderling feels that, more than 200 years into it's existence, new vistas -especially in the symphonic repertoire of late Romanticism - are opening up for the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. He and the players are looking forward to further voyages of discovery.

Le Concert d'Astr�e, a baroque music instrumental and vocal ensemble led by Emmanuelle Ha�m, is currently one of the finest exponents of this repertoire in the world. It was founded in 2000 by Emmanuelle Ha�m, who has surrounded herself with seasoned instrumentalists who share an outlook and artistic vision which is both expressive and authentic. Le Concert d'Astr�e has been in residence at the Op�ra de Lille since 2004 and has rapidly made a name for itself in France and internationally. In tandem with performing, the musicians are involved in educational outreach in the Hauts-de-France region via chamber music and cultural facilitation activities. The orchestra has a residency at the Coll�ge Miriam Makeba high school in Lille and tours the area meeting diverse audiences who share the rich and formative experience of interacting with the artists of Le Concert d'Astr�e.

Antonio Pappano conducts Rome's Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in two works from the earlier phase of Richard Strauss's career: a comparative rarity, the mercurial, virtuosic Burleske for piano and orchestra, with Bertrand Chamayou as soloist, and the epic autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben, one of the composer's orchestral masterpieces. "Strauss always thought dramaturgically," says Pappano. "Recording this music in Italy, the link has to be through opera, with all it's theatricality, temperament, contrast and colour... You need a certain charisma in the sound, which these players achieve."

Celebrated violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter introduces a new concerto by her friend and frequent collaborator John Williams, with the legendary composer himself conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Composed especially for Anne-Sophie Mutter, John Williams's Violin Concerto No. 2 is the culmination of several years of collaboration and friendship between two of the world's most celebrated musical artists. John Williams & Anne-Sophie Mutter reunite for World Premiere Recording of the composer's Violin Concerto No. 2 - written especially for Mutter. Alongside three film themes in special new arrangements by Williams. New Single and Video of "Rounds" (from the Concerto) out 11 March. Album released on Deutsche Grammophon on 3 June 2022. "I can only think of this piece as being about Anne-Sophie. I took my inspiration and energy directly from this great artist herself" - John Williams. "It has been a lifelong dream of mine to have John Williams compose a concerto for me." - Anne-Sophie Mutter

With the 10 arias on Tormento d'amore, Ian Bostridge demonstrates the important place that the tenor voice held in Italian opera from the mid-17th to the mid-18th century - often thought of as the era of the castrato. At this time, there were two main centres of opera in Italy: Venice, where such composers as Cavalli, Vivaldi, Cesti, Stradella, Sartorio and Legrenzi were active, and Naples, home to Provenzale, Caresana, Vinci and Fago. In addition to arias - two of them in world premiere recordings - the album offers five instrumental sinfonie and a traditional Neapolitan song, 'Lu cardillo', or 'The Goldfinch', a songbird closely associated with Naples. Bostridge is partnered by conductor Antonio Florio and his ensemble Cappella Neapolitana.

The EMI Classics recordings of C�cile Ousset (b. 1936), spanning the years between 1982 and 1991, would mark her third and most prestigious recording collaboration, launching her, at age forty-six, into the international limelight. Indeed, recognition did not come easily to this grand dame of the piano, who, at the age of fourteen, obtained her prize at the Paris Conservatoire under the tutelage of Marcel Ciampi and began the grueling rounds at major competitions shortly after: Geneva, Long-Thibaud, Queen Elisabeth and Busoni, as well as the inaugural edition of the Van Cliburn. As a young female pianist, doors remained firmly shut, even with the support of the great Arthur Rubinstein, who personally invested in Ousset's early career after witnessing her performance at the Long-Thibaud competition. Her rise to international fame came primarily in the 1970s, notably through her recordings for the German Eterna label as well as for Decca France. The year 1982 marked the release of her first solo recording with EMI, a vivid program pairing Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition with Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit. Writing in The Musical Times, Cyril Ehrlich lauds a "luminous tone" and a "sense of style", proclaiming, "C�cile Ousset is an exhilarating pianist". Her strong technique, based on the Russian method taught by Ciampi lends her playing a clear-cut and robust tone; her virtuosity is proved incontestable, revealing a mastery of sound, color and brilliance. Works of the French repertoire continued to occupy an important place in Ousset's programs. To France's greatest modernists, Debussy and Ravel, the pianist would consecrate significant recordings in the second half of the 80s. Liszt and Chopin were essential components of her repertoire as well. The recording of Chopin's Third Sonata brims with poignant lyricism and heroic sentiment, it's excellent pacing just as admirable as the naturalness of the playing, hardly ostentatious but in every way spellbinding. "Like Pollini," observes Gramophone, "the masterful Ousset commands in this work... [her] Chopin CD will give immense pleasure by reason of her indefatigable musical verve." A survey of C�cile Ousset's acclaimed concerto recordings for EMI may point to a seemingly-logical conclusion - that the pianist was drawn to the unabashedly-virtuosic heavyweights of the concerto literature: Rachmaninov, Saint-Sa�ns, Liszt, Prokofiev, Grieg, Tchaikovsky

2021 release. "A talent to reckon with: poised, committed, graceful and spirited," is how the Los Angeles Times has described the Russian-American cellist Nina Kotova. Her Warner Classics catalogue already includes an album of sonatas by Rachmaninov. It is now joined by a programme of German Romantic music which she recorded with the Brazilian-born pianist Jos� Feghali, a laureate of the Van Cliburn Competition who died aged just 53 in 2014. Spanning 65 years of musical history, the recital comprises works by Schumann and Brahms, who were close friends, and by Max Reger. He drew inspiration for his Suite No. 2 for solo cello, composed in 1914, from Pablo Casals's advocacy of Bach's solo suites.

BEETHOVAN Sonatas for Piano and Violin - Midori teams up with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for Beethoven Sonatas. "Sonatas are really musical conversations between two artists. Melodies are traded back and forth. Timing is critical. There is no room for error in the absence of a large orchestra. Truly they are performances without a net. Midori and Thibaudet proved a deft pair. "

Christina Pluhar states: "Monteverdi's most admirable trait is the enormous diversity of compositional techniques that he masters and interweaves with supreme skill. Our aim in this recording is to bring out the variet� of his secular compositions. The modernity that runs like a constant thread through his pieces and makes his music seem timeless even in the twenty-first century is selfevident if one considers, for example, his use of ostinato basses. Jazz musicians are supposed to have 'invented' the walking bass in the 1940s, but already in Monteverdi we find ostinato basses which diverge from the standard ostinatos of the seventeenth century, that are unique of their kind and sound extremely modern." The BBC Magazine reviews the performance as "technical perfection". The easy informality with each other and the music, with which these pieces are performed, makes for a captivating listen. One of the most exciting Baroque performances to hit the record shelves this year. A Must Listen."

An A-Z of 23 conductors in a feast of classic recordings from Decca's early years - 1929-1949 - including the golden age of it's 'ffrr' technology. Newly remastered from the best available sources by Mark Obert-Thorn, Ward Marston and Andrew Hallifax, this comprehensively annotated and richly illustrated set features several new-to-CD releases. It is a must-have for any follower of historical recordings. Spanning almost twenty years, the unique story of this set begins in May 1929 with Decca's first major recording, Delius's Sea Drift - a performance whose merits were obscured at the time by surface noise, but which the latest technology reveals to be a gloriously sympathetic reading of Delius's poignant elegy. Back then, the conductor (Anthony Bernard) was not even printed on the 78 labels; yet, for a later recording in the set, a suite of Handel, the name of Erich Kleiber stands out: a sign of how far the label travelled in it's first twenty years, through some choppy commercial waters, to become a byword for technological excellence and world-class musical artistry drawn from around the globe. The pre-war recordings inevitably centre on British/Irish conducting talent, old and new: Hamilton Harty, dynamic in Haydn and Walton; Walton himself, in a definitive first recording of Fa�ade; atmospheric Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Coates from Henry Wood. One of the rarest items in the set is Bach's Concerto for Two Violins as led by Mengelberg in 1936. The post-war material includes several great names of the podium from those pre-war days, judiciously picked up by Decca when they might otherwise have been forgotten: Albert Coates whipping up a frenzy in the Russian repertoire he made his own; Clemens Krauss, incandescent in Strauss from Milan and London; Leo Blech's genial 'Surprise' Symphony of Haydn. Senior composer-conductors include Fitelberg in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3 and Enescu in Schumann's Second. Then there are thrilling young podium tyros who were setting London musical life alight in the postwar years: Celibidache's electrifying and wayward Tchaikovsky, Martinon's exquisite Ravel, Coppola's majestic Schumann. A note from the remastering engineer Andrew Hallifax explains the history behind this first-ever release of Handel choruses conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. Mark Obert-Thorn explains his choice of treasures for this box and introduces the history of Decca and it's revolutionary development of 'full frequency range recording' in the late 1940s. Peter Quantrill expands the historical perspective with notes on both Decca and each of the individual conductors in the box.

More from the unique Leningrad/ Soviet Series featuring here top Russian cello stars

Two symphonies from the turbulent 1930s are juxtaposed in Lahav Shani's second Warner Classics release as Chief Conductor of The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Shani has described Kurt Weill's Symphony No 2, premiered by Bruno Walter in Amsterdam in 1933, as "one of my favourite pieces to conduct... It is tonal music, very melodic, very theatrical, and really not comparable to anything else." Shostakovich's powerful Symphony No 5, with it's enigmatic interplay of sincerity and irony, was chosen by Shani to conclude his inaugural concert as Music Director in Rotterdam in 2018.

Seven CD box set containing Ralph Vaughan Williams' complete symphonies. Vaughan Williams is a much revered figure in the history of British music. Included in this set is the ravishingly beautiful 'The Lark Ascending'. Conducted by Bernard Haitink, a one-time principal conductor of the London Philharmonic.