V�clav Jan Krvtitel Tom�ek wrote numerous songs and short piano pieces. His works predate those of his rather more famous near contemporary Franz Schubert by some years but remain mysterious neglected. This enthralling new album from Renata Pokupic and Roger Vignoles unfolds twenty-eight songs of a rare appeal. Tom�ek was one of the very few composers of Goethe settings to meet with the great poet's (relatively) undivided approval.

Vinyl LP pressing. Lang Lang joins forces with his wife, pianist Gina Alice, the Gewandhausorchester and the conductor Andris Nelsons Saint-Saens's "Grand Zoological Fantasy" for two pianos and orchestra. This special version includes readings of the much-loved comic verses written to accompany each movement of the work by American poet Ogden Nash (1902-1971). First voiced by Noel Coward on a recording issued in 1950, Nash's poems are here narrated by comedian and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon.

10 years after Seong-Jin Cho's first prize victory in the 2015 Warsaw Chopin Competition, during which the young Korean pianist ascended into stardom with a Deutsche Grammophon discography that includes Liszt, Brahms and Debussy, he prepares a monumental body of work for the 150th birthday anniversary of Maurice Ravel. 2 CD Digipak set.

Tarmo Peltokoski/Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen - "Mozart Symphonies" / Conducting three Mozart masterpieces, the rapturously acclaimed young Finnish phenomenon Tarmo Peltokoski makes his debut as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, about which he says: "It's a luxury to perform Mozart with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and to put these three symphonies on record is a dream come true."

Rudolf Serkin - "The Lost Tapes - Beethoven: Piano Sonat" / In the first of a fascinating new series - The Lost Tapes - the Strategic Repertoire Team (formally known as the Heritage Team, formally known as the Catalogue Team) is releasing Rudolf Serkin's final Beethoven recordings: The 'Waldstein' (1986) and 'Appassionata' (1989) sonatas. On the occasion of Rudolf Serkin's 120th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon is releasing Serkin's last Beethoven recordings for the first time: The two piano sonatas "Waldstein" and "Appassionata", recorded in 1986 and 1989. Due to Serkin's advanced illness, he was unable to finally approve the tapes at the time. This release of the great Beethoven pianist has now been made possible thanks to the support of Serkin's daughter Judith Serkin, who also contributed a personal text for the booklet. The recording presents a very personal, wise and tender reading of Beethoven. In addition to numerous photos, the booklet also includes recording protocol and a letter to the recording producer.

This major orchestral work was inspired in general by the composer's fascination with technology, and in particular by field recordings he made at Iceland's Ellida r power plant and the writings of Henry Adams. "J�hannsson's minimalistic music is infused by a sense of wonder based on how electricity has transformed the world"

Nearly twenty years have passed since Hel�ne Grimaud first encountered Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs. She has finally found a partner to perform these songs with in the sensational young baritone Konstantin Krimmel. Hel�ne explains, "It's music I find very touching in it's honest and transparency. It's poetic. It's not pretending to be anything and has a very special color and texture."

The Freiburger Barockorchester and Deutsche Grammophon launch their new creative partnership with an album of works associated with the celebrated Mannheim court orchestra. Mozart's Mannheim couples little-known gems by Cannabich, Holzbauer, Vogler and others with works written by Mozart during his formative visit to Mannheim.

ART OF ERICA MORINI

This major orchestral work was inspired in general by the composer's fascination with technology, and in particular by field recordings he made at Iceland's Ellida r power plant and the writings of Henry Adams. "J�hannsson's minimalistic music is infused by a sense of wonder based on how electricity has transformed the world"

Dialog: Ich und Du; The Wrath of God; The Light of the End - Vadim Repin, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Andris Nelsons, Sofia Gubaidulina We celebrate the 90th birthday of Sofia Gubaidulina, one of the leading composers of today, with three profound and spiritual orchestral works, all of which have been recorded for the first time. Andris Nelsons conducts the Gewandhausorchester Lepzig, featuring soloist Vadim Repin, who is the dedicatee of violin concerto Dialog: Ich und Du. Deutsche Grammophon

Long out of print, Deryck Cooke's invaluable 'Introduction to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen' reappears on CD, with it's original LP couplings of Siegfried Idyll and Kinderkatechismus. Almost as soon as it reached completion with the release of Die Walk�re in 1966, the Decca Ring cycle conducted by Sir Georg Solti was recognized as the greatest achievement in the history of recorded sound. Three years later, the cycle was issued complete for the first time, and it came with a significant appendix: a three-LP introduction to the music-drama, written and narrated by Deryck Cooke. An English writer on music, Cooke had come to international attention through his completion of Mahler's sketches for the Tenth Symphony. He was a friend of the Decca Ring's producer, John Culshaw, who invited him to make this introduction. No academic, but a broadcaster on the BBC's Third Programme and a pioneer in what might be called popular musicology, Cooke presumed no prior knowledge on the part of his listeners, only a willingness to immerse themselves in the world of the Ring and in it's universal themes of love, power, self-knowledge and tragedy. Outlining the musical leitmotifs which underpin the drama of the Ring, and the part they play in moving it ever onwards, Cooke drew for illustration on excerpts from the complete Decca recording. In addition, Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic recorded many excerpts especially for this introduction - played slower or extended or without voices, to aid comprehension. (Some of these excerpts may have been recorded during rehearsals for various orchestral sections.) Countless listeners have since had their understanding of the Ring immeasurably enhanced by engaging with Cooke's introduction. In complement to Decca's recent remastering of the original recording, Eloquence now reissues Cooke's introduction on CD, presented just as it was in the original box. Unlike previous digital-era issues, this set also includes the recordings of the Siegfried Idyll, led by the Vienna Philharmonic violinist Walter Weller, and the charming Katechismus which Wagner composed as another birthday present for his wife Cosima. All six LP sides fit on two generously filled CDs, and the booklet includes full details of the track points as well as newly inscribed musical examples, to help listeners navigate their way around the narrative. Much more than a period-piece, this set remains the ideal introduction to Wagner's Ring, with much to teach both newcomers and experienced listeners to a perennially challenging and rewarding work of theatrical genius.

Wiener Philharmoniker - "Deluxe Edition Vol. 2" / This luxurious hardback boxset provides a fascinating cross-section of the 170-year history of one of the world's greatest orchestras: the Wiener Philharmoniker. A lavishly illustrated 100-page hardcover coffee table book houses 20 CDs of recordings with 19 conductors spanning the past 70 years. Collectors will once again love the premium quality of this set and it's authority and comprehensive approach to this beloved orchestra. [20 CD Boxset]

Driving intensity, rhythmic flair, and demonstration-quality sound are brought to the fore in a new anthology of Antal Doráti's early recordings with the Philharmonia Hungarica on Mercury and Philips. Founded in 1956, the Philharmonia Hungarica emerged from turbulent post-war times as a crack ensemble of émigré Hungarian musicians who had fled Communism for the West. While they gave concerts in Europe and the US, it was through these seven albums on Mercury and Philips that they became famous, and synonymous with the name of the conductor Antal Doráti. Together, Doráti and the Philharmonia Hungarica would go on to make a celebrated cycle of Haydn symphonies for Decca in the early 1970s. But these early recordings already demonstrate what a potent artistic combination they were, as forerunners both to that monument of gramophone history, and to the modern-day Budapest Festival Orchestra. As reviewers at the time remarked, the strings play with a particular unanimity and attack which sounds uniquely 'Hungarian'.

A booklet essay by the music historian David Patmore tells the story of the Philharmonia Hungarica and their debut on record. All six Mercury albums were recorded at sessions in June 1958, held in the Vienna Konzerthaus: a spacious but analytical acoustic, well suited to the label's trademark high-impact sound. The repertoire played to the strengths of both label and musicians: mostly Hungarian music from the last half century, vividly colored and coursing with rhythmic energy.

There is an early taste of the ensemble's feeling for Haydn, in the 'Surprise' and 'Drum Roll' Symphonies. Doráti's established reputation as a masterful conductor of ballet brings a sweeping sense of line to a collection of Viennese waltzes. The ace in the pack of the Mercury/Philharmonia Hungarica albums was Respighi's suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, which soon became a demonstration disc for audiophiles worldwide. Never previously collected together, this Mercury legacy is complemented by the two albums which the Philharmonia Hungarica and Doráti recorded for Philips. The ensemble's first-ever recording, made in October 1957, appeared on the Fontana imprint, coupling Bartók's Divertimento with Leo Weiner's Hungarian Dances. From 1974, the second Philips album returns to Bartók, with gripping interpretations of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Dance Suite.

Mozart was Josef Krips's yardstick in music: 'My maxim is that everything has to sound as though it were by Mozart, or it will be a bad performance. ' Collected here are his Mozart symphony recordings with the Concertgebouworkest for Philips (1972-73), including a rehearsal sequence for Symphony No. 33, as well as the celebrated 1955 Vienna Don Giovanni for Decca. These are surrounded by the rare 'live' recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, his stereo Decca recordings of symphonies by Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and a previously unpublished overture by Weber. LIMITED EDITION. By the time stereo technology had become standard in the mid-1950s, Josef Krips had built an impressive recorded legacy for Decca documented in a companion set of mono recordings from Eloquence (Josef Krips Edition - Volume 1). Decca captured the conductor in several stereo remakes of canon repertoire - the last two symphonies of Schubert, Schumann's Fourth, the 'Haffner' and 'Jupiter' of Mozart - always with something deeper and wiser to say about repertoire which he had been exploring for 40 years and more, affording absorbing comparisons with his mono versions. Complementing his mono-era version of Mozart's Die Entf�hrung aus dem Serail, Krips recorded a stereo Don Giovanni, now with a more international, less Viennese cast headed by the vocally sensuous Don of Cesare Siepi and complemented by Fernando Corena as Leporello. Other vocal treasures in the set include Inge Borkh on imperious form in Beethoven, Weber and the closing scene of Strauss's Salome. Also located in the Decca archive was a stereo recording of Weber's Oberon Overture, now published for the first time. With the Vienna Symphony Orchestra we have a live recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with star soloists Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Too little of Krips's work outside the Austro-German canon was preserved on record, as the beautifully moulded shape and definition of his 1958 Vienna Philharmonic version of Tchaikovsky's Fifth demonstrates. You would easily guess from it that Mozart was Krips's yardstick in music, and for Philips he finally made a thorough-going survey of the mid-period and mature symphonies, from No. 21 onwards, which he had performed throughout his life. When released in France in harness with the early symphonies led by Marriner, the set included Krips leading a rehearsal sequence of Symphony No. 33 with his characteristically affable authority, and this has been released internationally for the first time on CD. As for the symphonies themselves, Krips sustains them with a natural warmth and breathing pulse that has always placed them in the top rank of 'traditional' performances. The conductor's legacy is addressed in a new essay by Niek Nelissen. Photos and original jackets evoke the 50s and 60s as much as Krips's music-making.

Romanticist and classicist, modernist and conservative, the violinist Joseph Szigeti defied classification. His wide repertoire ranged from Bach to Bart�k and beyond, and he played it all with skill and understanding, becoming known as 'the thinking man's virtuoso'. Issued internationally and complete, for the first time on CD in this Limited Edition original-jackets collection, these Mercury recordings were made in New York and London during the autumn of Szigeti's career, between 1959 and 1961. The original Mercury tapes have been given new high-definition transfers at Abbey Road Studios, and then remastered by Thomas Fine.

Complete on CD for the first time, the Deutsche Grammophon legacy of cult violinist Johanna Martzy, and of violist Michael Mann. Five original DG albums complete on two CDs. The brilliant tone and discriminating taste of the recordings made by Johanna Martzy (1924-79) mark her out among the finest violinists of her generation. Her EMI albums, supervised by Walter Legge, were once highly prized rarities. However, her recording career began with DG, who partnered her with two of their star conductors, Ferenc Fricsay and Eugen Jochum, in concertos by Dvor�k (1953) and Mozart (No 4, from 1955). She had performed the Dvor�k with Fricsay in concert, and their recording preserves a harmonious meeting of two fierily temperamental artists, widely rated among the best of the non-Czech recordings of the work. Plans for Martzy to record Tchaikovsky's concerto were abandoned when Legge poached her for HMV/EMI but subsequently lost interest. We are left with a small, precious legacy which opened in 1951, in the dying days of 78rpm recording, with her most constant recital partner, Jean Antonietti, at the piano. Encore pieces by Ravel, Milhaud, Falla and Szymanowski capture her Hungarian fire but do not represent her inclination away from virtuoso repertoire and towards the great sonatas and concertos. Mozart's F major Sonata followed, and then Beethoven's Op. 30 No. 3 as a coupling for the Mozart. When Martzy's encore pieces were reissued on LP, they were coupled in original fashion with two modern viola sonatas played by Michael Mann (1919-76), son of the novelist Thomas Mann. Mann's DG recordings were completed a few months later in May 1952 with the Quatre visages of Milhaud, issued on a seven-inch 45rpm disc; with this release they reach CD for the first time. In his time Mann was recognised as a fine musician in his own right and not merely his father's son. He played in the San Francisco Symphony before teaching German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Tully Potter provides the fascinating background note.

Collected for the first time - Erich Kleiber's rare recordings with the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Berliner Philharmoniker made for Polydor/Grammophon and newly remastered for this release. Erich Kleiber's appointment to the musical directorship of the Staatsoper Berlin in 1923 proved to be the making of his career. Hired on the strength of a single Fidelio, he thrilled audiences and critics with performances of unparalleled vigour and intensity. He soon began recording for the short-lived Vox company (not to be confused with the later US label) but in 1926 he agreed a contract with the Grammophon label, building on his regular season of orchestral concerts which were interspersed with opera performances. Here, newly remastered by Mark Obert-Thorn and issued complete for the first time in any format, is that Grammophon legacy of Kleiber's Berlin years with both the Staatskapelle and the celebrated Berliner Philharmoniker. Beginning modestly enough with four of Mozart's German dances - to fill two sides of a 78rpm record - the scope of the sessions expanded to take in complete symphonies by Beethoven (No. 2), Schubert (No. 8 'Unfinished') and Dvor�k (No. 9 'From the New World') alongside much popular repertoire such as the incidental music to Rosamunde and A Midsummer Night's Dream and the overtures to William Tell and Die Fledermaus. Many of these recordings were not marketed or reviewed abroad despite their artistic excellence, but Kleiber's 1928 account of 'Vltava' from M� vlast soon gained classic status. No wonder, now, when listening again to the moonlit interlude and Kleiber's gently flowing pulse, his superb balancing of parts which transcends the limitations of the technology and makes a nonsense of his apparent reluctance to record. Alternative versions of 'Vltava', as well as the second take of a side from the 'New World' Symphony which became Kleiber's final Grammophon album (recorded in May and August 1929) are also presented. Alan Sanders provides an extensive note, and Mark Obert-Thorn provides a background to the sources for these recordings.

A landmark tribute to Roger Desormiere, a great French conductor of the mid-twentieth century, including many recordings new to CD. A car crash in March 1953 cruelly cut short the career of Roger Desormiere, who at the age of 53 had already established a reputation as one of the most insightful French conductors of his or any previous era. The resulting stroke left him barely able to communicate, incapable of work. His pupils, including Pierre Boulez, were distraught, but Desormiere clung on for thirteen painful years, eventually dying a broken man. Desormiere's legacy on disc is a case of what might have been. Record companies showed little interest in recording the modern repertoire of which he was so stylish and dedicated an interpreter, at least the equal in this regard of Hans Rosbaud and Rene Leibowitz. His one indisputable classic of the gramophone is the 1941 HMV recording of Pelleas et Melisande, but he recorded much else for several different labels. The present set brings together all his Decca recordings for the first time, made in mono between 1947 and 1951, newly remastered and constituting a substantial tribute to a musician of manifold gifts. As a regular conductor of both the Ballets Suedois and the Ballets Russes in Paris, Desormiere gave the premieres of Satie's last two ballets; Decca captured his mastery of ballet conducting in suites of Scarlatti, Chopin, Delibes and Tchaikovsky. Of music from his own time there is Poulenc's Les Biches, and the Divertissement of Ibert from 1951 (his final Decca recording), both done with the most refined ear for orchestral texture. His disc of lyric and coloratura arias with Janine Micheau unites him with a singer who, like him, brought a light touch to everything she did. On a visit to London in May 1947 Desormiere undertook his only recording assignment for Decca in the UK, recording in a single day Bizet's Jeux d'enfants and Patrie Overture, Debussy's Marche ecossaise and Chabrier's Habanera, in Kingsway Hall, with Sidney Beer's body of freelance players, the National Symphony Orchestra. Every other recording was made with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, and each one has a character as Parisian as the Tuileries and the Bateaux-mouches.

Sir Adrian Boult's first Messiah for Decca, newly remastered and coupled with a rare L'Oiseau-Lyre recording of the Bach Magnificat, new to CD. When this Messiah was released in 1954, critics were quick to recognise it as exemplifying the English oratorio tradition at it's finest. Boult used a large chorus - the London Philharmonic Choir, singing with superb discipline and clarity of articulation - but he rejected both the monumental style of performance cultivated by Sir Malcolm Sargent and the anachronistic trappings of Sir Thomas Beecham's Handel. Boult slimmed down the LPO to chamber-orchestra dimensions, though he did not neglect the oratorio's moments of grandeur, pathos and splendour. Almost everywhere, the recorded sound belies it's age. With mono this vivid and with bass frequencies this powerful, few will pine for stereo. Each orchestral section is sharply delineated: a glint of oboe timbre here, a welcome emphasis on the bottom line's crunchy bassoon timbre there. In fact his stereo remake from seven years later (with the London Symphony Orchestra) has a more old-fashioned feel, due at least in part to a more operatically scaled team of soloists. In 1954 Boult's cast was led by the elegant and imperious soprano of Jennifer Vyvyan. The male soloists, too, found favour with Benjamin Britten when casting his operas; the recording is particularly valuable as a rare example on records of the artistry of the American tenor George Maran: always well-focused, assured from top to bottom of the register. More British singers on top form may be enjoyed in the coupling, a recording of Bach's Magnificat made in 1955 for L'Oiseau-Lyre by the London-based Kalmar Chamber Orchestra and St Anthony Singers. The Swiss conductor Pierre Colombo, little known now, presides over a rhythmically vital account, lent a further 'period' feel by the stylish contributions of both the countertenor Alfred Deller and the slender, pure-toned soprano member of the Deller Consort, Eileen McLoughlin. This reissue is further enhanced by a new essay by R.J. Stove, contextualising both the works and these marvellous performances.

Bliss: The Decca Originals: a new collection of Decca recordings of Bliss's music, including tracks previously unreleased on Decca CD as well as the complete version of the Violin Concerto with Alfredo Campoli. The career of Arthur Bliss was launched in London in the 1920s with provocative ensemble pieces such as Rout, but it was established by the Colour Symphony which Sir Edward Elgar invited him to write for the Three Choirs Festival. Bliss gradually became an establishment figure, appointed Master of the Queen's Music in 1953 and a fluent maker of music celebrating Englishness (such as Welcome the Queen, 1954) at a time when notions of national identity were coming under scrutiny as never before. However, Bliss always retained something of the dashing provocateur about him, and his best music often had a terse and anguished quality - such as the Introduction and Allegro which filled out the first LP of the Colour Symphony, or the score he wrote for the H.G. Wells film, Things to Come, or the Second String Quartet. These premiere, composer-conducted and -supervised recordings from the 1950s are reissued here, along with a genuine rarity, Baraza: a concertante movement for piano and orchestra crafted from the film music he wrote for Men of Two Worlds. In 1955 Bliss responded to a BBC commission with his most accomplished work in the concerto genre, written with the violinist Alfredo Campoli in mind. The premiere enjoyed a great success, and a Decca recording soon followed. However, the composer remained dissatisfied by the length of the concerto, and having recorded it complete, ensured that certain cuts were made for the first release. This missing material has been restored and the whole recording newly remastered, presenting on CD for the first time the complete score of the Concerto as it's composer and first soloist recorded it.

Newly remastered and gathered under one roof for the first time, the Decca recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Bruckner: a legendary combination. For record collectors in the 1950s and 60s, the names of Bruckner and Knappertsbusch ('Kna') were practically synonymous. At a time when the composer's symphonies were routinely compared to Gothic cathedrals, the rough grandeur, steady pulse and towering climaxes of these readings marked out the conductor as an architect of symphonic majesty. Record companies did not have to work hard to cultivate this image, thanks to Knappertsbusch's craggy visage, imposing presence on the podium and decades of Wagnerian experience at Bayreuth. At a time when Wagner's Parsifal was still experienced as a primarily sacred music drama, the major works of Bruckner were likewise understood in semi-sacred terms as concert-hall rites, and who better to pierce their mysteries than Parsifal's pre-eminent interpreter? Knappertsbusch began recording Bruckner for Decca in 1954, with the Third. The Fourth and Fifth quickly followed, also from Vienna, and then the Eighth arrived as an appendix from Munich, first issued on the Westminster label in 1963. By then the conductor's readings of Romantic repertoire had become less impulsive, even more monumental in concept, but still lightened by a natural feeling for the dance rhythms in Bruckner's scherzos and L�ndler themes. Knappertsbusch persisted in conducting from editions prepared by Bruckner's pupils, notably the Schalk brothers, with their liberal re-scorings and cuts, to the finales in particular - all outlined in a perceptive booklet essay by Antony Hodgson. In the light of recent scholarship and a more nuanced perspective on Bruckner's evolving intentions with the composing and revising of his symphonies, these performances gain a certain, compelling authenticity of their own. No Brucknerian can afford to be without them.

This was the first of two recordings by Ernest Ansermet of pell�as et m�lisande, a work he conducted several times on stage. This recording was made in April 1952 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere. Many performed it with Ansermet, who himself conducted the work nine times with his Suisse Romande orchestra. The booklet includes a track-by-track synopsis, an overview of the recording by Juan Pons, as well as a probing essay on Debussy's's opera by Ansermet himself which was printed with the first LP issue of this recording.

Wagner: Highlights from "The Ring"

This is the first recording of pianist Igor Levit, conductor Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic with Brahms' two Piano Concertos. The release is a triple-CD album with Levit's recording of Brahm's late solo piano works opp 116-119. As a special encore Levit and Thielemann also play the four-hand Brahms Waltz op. 39/15 together.

REVIEW:

Levit’s utterly compelling accounts of the late sets are the more impressive element in this collection. He does not put a foot wrong in any of them; each piece is perfectly shaped, its subtly varied emotional charge instantly identified. It’s hard to think of many better recordings of these 20 gems, and certainly not of all four opus numbers together.

— The Guardian