SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No. 2. 1 Die glückliche Hand. 2 Wind Quintet, op. 26 3 • Robert Craft, cond; Philharmonia O; 1,2 Mark Beesley (bs); 2 Simon Joly Chorale; 2 New York Ww Qnt 3 • NAXOS 8.557526 (78:21)


This disc combines two reissues from a 2001 Koch CD with one new recording, the Wind Quintet. It might also be thought of as a collection of Schoenberg’s difficult music. The Second Chamber Symphony’s difficulties lie in defying expectations. Its marvelous, fascinating predecessor, which established the one-instrument-to-a-part chamber orchestra, is repudiated in form, scoring, and emotional tone. Schoenberg began the somber opening movement in 1906, immediately after completing the exuberant First Chamber Symphony; he worked on it as late as 1916 but was unable to complete it. He returned to it in 1939, by which time “my style has become much more profound.” Ironically, despite the three-decade lapse and the chamber scoring, the completed work is reminiscent of Gurrelieder , not only in its potent emotional content but even in its sound. The second movement, Con fuoco, rollicks along for about eight minutes and then shifts to a thoughtful, quiet epilogue that the composer originally intended as a separate finale. The piece shows no sign of Schoenberg’s theories or systems and could be mistaken for a late or post-Romantic tone poem. There have been successful recordings before—I particularly liked a 1970 live performance led by Bruno Maderna—but Craft outshines them all, turning what is often an unconvincing work into a thoroughly winning piece. One of his secrets is not to stretch out the slow sections; his 18:46 lops 10 percent off the timing of every other recording I have on hand (Boulez, Maderna, Mauceri). The strings do tend to cover the winds, due to poorly balanced, slightly muddy recorded sound from Abbey Road Studio One, July 2000.


The one-man opera (plus chamber chorus) Die glückliche Hand remains as much of an enigma as ever. Even Craft—who suggests The Hand of Fate as a title—can’t illuminate its amateurish self-analysis. The texts and detailed synopsis, printed in the original Koch issue, are replaced here by Craft’s comments, which in truth serve as well. Is this 1912–13 work misunderstood, or is it simply a failure? I’ll leave that decision to another century. Chorus (six men, six women) and orchestra perform well; the baritone has so little to sing—about a dozen lines of text—that one cannot evaluate his contributions. Recorded two months later at the same venue, the sound is fine.


The virtuosic, dodecaphonic Wind Quintet has been a bugaboo of instrumentalists and listeners since its first performance in 1924. Craft claims that early performances ran an hour, and that wind-players are only now able to perform it up to speed. Indeed, this one takes 38:21, whereas my favorite recording, made by members of the London Sinfonietta in 1974, runs 50:52. Speed is of course not everything: Tom Stoppard’s The (15 Minute) Dogg’s Troupe Hamlet does not mine the glories of Shakespeare, and I cringe at the thought of a half-hour “Eroica,” but Craft may be on target this time. The playing is superb, so I must devote a few extra hearings to accustom myself to the tempos. Craft also mentions that some earlier performances required a conductor (David Atherton in London), but he and Naxos leave us in the dark as to whether he was involved with this 2004 recording at New York’s Academy of Arts and Letters.


As always, Craft’s program notes are revealing, egotistical, and provocative: the Chamber Symphony’s Con fuoco “requires a much higher degree of instrumental virtuosity than any piece by Stravinsky.” Has Le sacre become so easy to play? Also: “the Schoenberg is incomparably more abundant in substance, emotional power, and compositional skill” than the middle movement of Stravinsky’s Ode . The Russian composer, who had something of an ego himself, will be awaiting Craft at the gates of whatever place they spend their eternities; their conversation may bring a rare smile to Schoenberg’s dour visage. Craft often claims that his performances are superior to any previous ones; this time he is right. Highly recommended!


FANFARE: James H. North

This is Schoenberg for people who hate Schoenberg. The Five Pieces for Orchestra, far from sounding radical or appallingly dissonant as they must have in 1909, now impress us as impressionistic, atmospheric, and evocative. The loony Cello Concerto after Monn and the Brahms Piano Quartet are both modern classics in the art of transcription, not to mention one composer's very strongly personalized view of his predecessors.


Robert Craft's performances are uniformly impressive, particularly in the Cello Concerto. Its appallingly difficult solo part is handled with consummate intelligence and virtuosity by Fred Sherry, and the accompaniment hardly could be clearer or cleaner in texture. The Brahms is very good too, surpassed only by Craft himself in his earlier Sony recording with the Chicago Symphony. This newcomer, however, does enjoy much better sonics, and at the Naxos price makes an excellent bargain.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Tchaikovsky: The Masterworks

Two historic recordings with famous conductor Karl Bohm and the Swiss/Hungarian pianist Geza Anda. The Mozart concerto dates from 1974 and marks the artist's last appearance with orchestra in Salzburg.

Although Mozart composed them in his early twenties, the three symphonies presented here can in no way be regarded as early works. Written around the time of his departure from Salzburg for Vienna, these symphonies show that Mozart could deliver attractive, varied, orchestrally colourful and characterful music to suit a variety of public tastes. They also show a young and ambitious composer seeking to forge an impregnable reputation in Europe’s musical capital city. These symphonies truly opened a new chapter in Mozart’s symphonic output, as he demonstrated his absolute mastery of orchestral writing. In addition to the three symphonies as we know them, this recording also includes a minuet that may have been intended to form part of Symphony No. 34.

These three symphonies are performed here by the Philharmonia Orchestra, an ensemble that has performed them with the greatest conductors throughout its almost 80-year history. Here the conductor is the eminent Mozartian Michael Collins, whose recordings, notably that devoted to the Austrian composer’s clarinet concerto and quintet, have earned him the highest praise.

REVIEWS:

As a poetic exponent of Mozart’s music for clarinet, Michael Collins, unsurprisingly, shapes all three slow movements with a natural feeling for Mozartian line. His flowing tempos sound spot on.

— Gramophone

There is always room in the Mozart discography for new recordings of this stature.

— BBC Music Magazine

Idil Biret's first concerto recording

Bach's music has always attracted arrangers and orchestrators - such as Stokowski, Elgar and Busoni, to name just three. Regardless of it's original version, Bach's music has an expressive power, drama and architectural logic that lend themselves well to expanded orchestral sonorities. Bassoonist and conductor Robin O'Neill buried his head in the Goldberg Variations, which he had discovered through Glenn Gould's recordings, during the first months of the Covid lockdown. Soon after that, the idea of making an arrangement for orchestra began to obsess him as he began hearing instrumental and orchestral sonorities in the keyboard work. Since the main challenge was to reclothe the music without damaging the subtle intricacy of the piece, and after much thought and experimentation, O'Neill chose instruments that Bach himself would have recognized for the solo parts. His reinterpretation of the Goldberg Variations offers a mixture of full orchestral variations interspersed with concertante ones involving two, three or four solo instruments, at times close to St Matthew Passion-style writing. Completed during a difficult period, this arrangement was made, in the words of O'Neill, in the hope that it expresses the joy and solace that Bach's music gives both performer and listener.

The two concertos performed here by Michael Collins and the Philharmonia Orchestra were both intended for a specific player – Mozart composed his for Anton Stadler and Richard Birchall for Michael Collins himself. Both works – as well as Mozart's Clarinet Quintet – were also written for a particular instrument: the basset clarinet, a slightly larger and deeper clarinet than the one in A which soon after Mozart had written his concerto became the standard. At the very core of the clarinet repertoire, the two works by Mozart have until recently been played on the A clarinet, with necessary adjustments being made to the solo part. Nowadays, however, they are more and more often performed on the instrument they were intended for. Richard Birchall, in his Concerto for Basset Clarinet, also makes the most of the basset clarinet's extended range, for instance in the third movement, "Impossible Construction." That movement, and indeed the whole work, is inspired by the artwork of M. C. Escher and its combination of surreal elements and mathematical precision. With the two concertos, Michael Collins continues his long-standing collaboration with the Philharmonia Orchestra, which includes an acclaimed recording on BIS of works by Vaughan Williams and Finzi. For the Clarinet Quintet he has invited his colleagues from the Wigmore Soloists, the chamber ensemble that he leads together with Isabelle van Keulen.

On his second album for Alpha Classics, rising star violinist Kerson Leong juxtaposes the Violin Concertos of Bruch and Benjamin Britten. This unusual pairing is a reflection on the journey from one extreme of expression to another. Bruch’s In Memoriam is the perfect bridge between them. “The Britten expresses a raw and exposed experience, while the Bruch is comforting and uplifting. After the last few years in which the world has experienced much difficulty and uncertainty due to pandemic, war, and crisis, recording this album in London in January 2021 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Patrick Hahn was a profoundly cathartic moment. It is in the spirit of catharsis that I offer this album.” - Kerson Leong

REVIEW:

The clincher for me was the lead work on the disc, Britten’s Violin Concerto, which actually has enjoyed a rash of recent recordings by “name” players, but none that has managed to make sense of the piece for me – or even particularly to like it. Leong changed that for me, and when an artist can overcome my resistance and make me hear a work in a different perspective, one that illuminates its beauty and elucidates its soul, that is worthy of a Want List entry.

-- Fanfare

Kerson Leong’s splendid account of the Bruch comes hot on the heels of [other recordings, but] Leong’s take on the piece is more outgoing in expression. Leong’s generosity of phrase and tone, for instance, comes unashamedly from the chest in the songful reaches of the slow movement, and in the finale where the big tune bears down on the G string he really tugs at our emotions.

The bonus addition here is Bruch’s littleheard but substantial tribute to Joseph Joachim, In memoriam, which is as turbulent as it is reflective, as befitting the legendary violinist’s fighting spirit, and gives Leong further opportunity to sing from the heart. My thoughts occasionally turned to Elgar and the more than a hint of nobilmente that it proffers.

But it is the coupling of the Britten Violin Concerto (gratifyingly becoming more and more core repertoire these days) which...sets this disc apart. The inspiration here was another violinist, Antonio Brosa, but more self-evidently, through the Spanish inflections in its material, it’s a meditation on that most divisive of civil wars – something which clearly distressed and exercised Britten, the pacifist. This is the composer at his most elegiac and unsettled (is it major or minor?) and Leong is clearly at one with its inner tussles – but also with all the extraordinary sparks of originality which make it unmistakably Britten: like the powerful coda of the first movement which pits the soloist’s abrasive pizzicato against deeply meditative strings only to have him grow more and more prayerful with the music’s ascendancy.

The kinship with Shostakovich is startling in the trenchant Scherzo, which Leong digs into with great resilience, but again the entry of the tuba with violin and piccolo in extremis high above the stave is pure Britten, as is the emotive orchestral climax.

But Leong really makes his mark with the concluding Passacaglia, a form so beloved of both Britten and Shostakovich as a metaphorical anchor in times of great stress. Suddenly psychological ambiguities are set aside and in the wake of one war Britten becomes contentious objector of all. The tragedy catches in his throat and the music of those closing pages – movingly projected by Leong – chokes on the soloist’s final utterances. With outstanding collaboration from Patrick Hahn and the Philharmonia Orchestra I can’t recall a better account of the piece than this.

-- Gramophone

When in 1913 Respighi settled in Rome where he would reside for the rest of his life, he would produce a large amount of highly varied music-some of it now well-known, much of it less so. Geoffrey Simon’s championship of the little-known works of celebrated composers has proved highly successful on both record and in the concert hall, and his exploration of Respighi’s catalogue has yielded a number of colourful compositions whose neglect hitherto remains something of a mystery. The works recorded on this Cala Signum reissue cover a wide range of moods, from the opulence and excitement for which Respighi was noted in his famous Roman Trilogy, to more reflective pieces inspired by nostalgia for the music of the past.

Ravel grew up in Paris during la belle epoque, the thirty-odd years prior to 1914 when Paris was the unquestioned artistic center of the world. The fin de siecle years saw him enter the Paris Conservatoire. He was an immensely gifted youth, and one by one his early compositions began to show a real mastery of conception and execution-before the 1800s were out, he had produced such assured works as Habenera, Menuet antique, several fine songs, and Pavane pour une infante defunte.

Ravel's status as one of the most popular composers of all time rests to a large extent on the phenomenal success of Bolero. Yet there is much more to this endlessly intriguing man's work than the "seventeen minutes of orchestral tissue without music": childhood fantasy, Spain, the Orient, American jazz, the theater, clockwork toys and all the things mechanical, preoccupied Maurice Ravel throughout his life, and echoes of each can be found in all corners of his music.

This new album presents three major orchestral works by British composer William Mival, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins. Spanning two decades, the album features the expansive new symphony Vale, the contemplative Tristan - still, and the Welsh-themed Pluen (feather). Together, they trace Mival's engagement with tradition and landscape. From the concentrated focus of Tristan - still to the folk-song variations of Pluen and the broad, five-movement design of Vale, the recording offers a clear overview of Mival's approach to writing for large forces.

The great Yevgeny Svetlanov frequently conducted Debussy. His interpretation of Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune in the Philharmonia concert recorded here in 2001 has an almost operatically vocal style, coupled with spacious tempo. He achieves a most remarkable response from the Philharmonia both in this piece and La Mer, in which the dramatically assertive style of brass playing contributes to a particularly powerful approach to the French composer's music. Svetlanov's conducting of Respighi's orchestration of two of Rachmaninov's Etudes-Tableaux, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in October 1999, is typically atmospheric in the first tableaux - La Mer et les Mouettes (The Sea and the Gulls) following Debussy's La Mer, while the second, La Foire (The Fair) demonstrates the conductor's wonderful ear for colour. Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes was composed for sextet in 1919 while in the USA, but was re-scored for orchestra in 1934. Svetlanov's concert with the LSO from October 1979 is a rarity since his only recording dates back to an early Melodiya account.

Santtu conducts Strauss: Ein Heldenleben is the sixth album from Philharmonia Records. Con- ducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, this performance was recorded at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall. PRAISE FOR Santtu conducts Shostakovich: Symphony 10 "Themes from the previous movements are intriguingly revived and intertwined and the sheer energy of Rouvali's onslaught upon the music almost convinces us of the heroism of resistance and endurance, ultimately rewarded by explosive, joyous liberation." - MusicWeb International "The first movement is both atmospheric and flowing, sensitively delineating each stage in the unfolding psychological drama." - Gramophone

The combination of Herbert von Karajan and the revered Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) was an ideal partnership. Karajan had an extraordinary rapport with her, describing her career as ‘a long and often sorrowful march to glory’ due to Haskil’s well documented ill-health. Since she and Karajan were contracted to different companies, they never recorded together which makes this live Salzburg performance to mark Mozart’s bicentenary in 1956 especially valuable. Haskil, notoriously self-critical wrote: “The concert tour with Karajan was unique and unforgettable.” Karajan’s reading of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 is characteristically fleet-footed with great tension, a rare example of a live recording featuring the Philharmonia Orchestra and the conductor in concert together.

Santtu conducts Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 is the fifth album from Philharmonia Records. Largely interpreted as depicting Stalin's regime in Russia, the orchestra delivers tragedy, violence and gloom before the brief but triumphant finale. Conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, this performance was recorded at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall in April 2024.

Santtu conducts Shostakovich is the fourth album from Philharmonia Records, featuring Shostakovich's colourful Sixth Symphony alongside his subversive and sardonic Ninth Symphony. Conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, these performances were recorded at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall in 2023.

Acclaimed Signum artist Alexandra Dariescu brings a new combination of concertos: Clara Schumann's Concerto in A minor Op. 7 coupled with Grieg's A minor concerto Op. 16. Alexandra Dariescu is a trailblazing pianist who demonstrates fearless curiosity and ground-breaking innovation. As part of her artistic journey, Dariescu has achieved gender equality in her concerto programming for three consecutive seasons, reviving and premiering important works by both male and female composers, championing inclusion and diversity. "I got to know Clara Schumann's Concerto and fell in love with this youthful piece, full of dreams, fiendish virtuosity and a testament to what an innovative performer and composer Clara was, even as a teenager. [Recording these works] It made me realise once again what a responsibility we all have to show both sides of history, to mirror our society in concert programmes and to shine a light on the often-overlooked brilliance of women composers" - Alexandra Dariescu.

It is significant that, when Lloyd turned his attention to writing concertante works for the violin, he avoided using full orchestral forces. His sensitivity to issues of balance and scrupulousness in scoring in his operas was matched by his determination that the solo instrument in his concertos should not be overwhelmed by thick orchestral textures. As he put it, 'I don't really like the relationship between the violin and the big modern orchestra. I hate to hear that poor little fiddle being totally swamped'.

Lloyd became a symphonist despite himself. When he was in his twenties he seemed destined to be a composer of operas and it is likely that, had the vicissitudes of war not intervened, he would have written music for the stage exclusively. In an article for the June 1939 issue of the Musical Monthly Record, Harry Farjeon wondered why music for Lloyd was ‘not centred in the concert hall but in the theatre’ and quoted the young composer as being ‘interested only in opera’. There are strong traces in the symphonies of what might have been: the intensely lyrical, cantabile nature of the writing, the intermezzo-like movements, the opera buffa qualities of the finales and the feeling for the long line which runs through those supple and sweeping melodies all denote a born opera composer. In the event his operatic aspirations were cruelly cut short and it is to his courageous, life-affirming twelve symphonies that we must look to chart his development, recovery and eventual triumph.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the label debut of the acclaimed British composer Howard Blake with a disc of his orchestral music to mark his 85th birthday. Blake himself is heard at the piano and conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, with Paul Daniel also conducting the English Northern Philharmonia. Internationally recognised as the composer of The Snowman's 'Walking on Air', Blake's prolific and wide-ranging achievements extend into symphonies, concertos, oratorios and music for solo piano to embrace the concert hall, dance stage and cinema screen. This focus on his orchestral music which includes four first recordings begins with his single- movement Symphony No.1 in it's 1990 revision, a richly variegated work of vivid images and, as it's title has it, Impressions of a City. A work of dazzling, multi-faceted dimensions and execution, it is, writes Robert Matthew-Walker in his authoritative booklet notes, an "organic, truly symphonic, composition from a genuine creative figure". Concert Dances, for piano and orchestra, from 1992 and featuring Blake conducting from the piano, comprises nine relatively short dance movements in various styles to vivacious effect. Alluding to Eleanor of Aquitaine, 1979's The Court of Love is a ravishing concert suite of three movements drawn from Blake's ballet score for choreographer Lynn Seymour marking Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee two years previously. The suite taken from his soundtrack to the 1987 film A Month in the Country shows Blake at his most exquisite and expressive in a score, says Matthew-Walker, that "surely belongs in any collection of 20th-century English music for string orchestra". SOMM's long championing of British composers includes recent discs devoted to Stephen Dodgson (SOMMCD 0659; 0673), Penelope Thwaites (SOMMCD 0612; 0672), Kenneth Leighton (SOMMCD 0667), Holst (SOMMCD 279), Ian King (SOMMCD 0649) and Elgar (SOMMCD 278).

The Hungarian violinist Johanna Martzy was born in Temesvár, then in Hungary, today in Romania, on October 26, 1924, and was hailed as a wunderkind. At the age of seven, she became the last pupil to be taken under the wing of the great violin teacher Jenö Hubay, who had enabled artists like Joseph Szigeti and Sándor Végh to fly high. Ferenc Gabriel continued the girl's training after Hubay's death, helping her to win first prize at the Hubay Competition when she was seventeen. She took up studies at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy in Budapest the following year and made her orchestral debut with the Tchaikovsky Concerto under the baton of Willem Mengelberg a year later. When Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, Johanna Martzy and her husband Béla Szillery fled via Austria and France to Switzerland. There she won the Concours International d'Exécution Musicale in Geneva in 1947, and her international career gradually gained momentum. She began making gramophone records in 1950; Ferenc Fricsay's recording of the Dvorák concerto for Deutsche Grammophon of 1953 is notable for its rousing intensity and still enjoys benchmark status. In 1954 and 1955 EMI's legendary record producer Walter Legge made the recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin presented here.

In spite of a successful concert comeback in the 1960s, she was no longer in the top flight. It seems symbolical that it was in Budapest that she discovered she had hepatitis in 1969. Johanna Martzy steadily grew weaker and died in Switzerland on August 13, 1979, a year after the death of her husband. The present recordings remain a rare attestation of the brilliance of Johanna Martzy's playing, and it ensures her everlasting fame, at least among connoisseurs.

REVIEW:

The Hungarian violinist Johanna Martzy, who died in Zurich in 1979 at the age of only 54, experienced a short, steep international career at the beginning of the 1950s. She has remained an icon for insiders to this day and is considered the last great representative of the Hungarian violin school.

Profil has now refreshed the majority of their EMI recordings plus two Yellow Label concertos produced in 1952 and 1953 by Mozart (KV 218) under Jochum and the legendary Dvořák concerto under Fricsay and packed them into a 6-CD box set. The EMI bundle includes the two concertos by Brahms (1954) and Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1955) recorded with Paul Kletzki, which are still among the most expressive interpretations of the entire discography, as well as Schubert's (almost) complete works for violin and piano, and then also her legendary Abbey Road recordings of Bach's solo sonatas and partitas.

Martzy embodies the romantic Bach conception of the time, which aims for intensity, expressiveness, and flowing legato, and an aesthetic that wants to overwhelm the listener with beauty and dramatic stringency. At the same time, on her full-bodied, almost viola-like sonorous Bergonzi violin from 1733, she ignites such an inner fervor and draws such arcs of suspense that one cannot evade her infinitely spun, plastic lines. Every single tone is suggestively shaped and part of the flowing universe: drama and logic in one. And with the changing keys it also changes the respective basic color of its tone, i.e. from the darkened sonority of the D minor partita to the radiantly bright E major of the third partita. You can feel the objective and subjective power of this music at every moment: they are monologues of harrowing beauty.

Her interpretations of the concertos by Mozart, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Brahms and Dvořák, glowing with intensity, shine as flawlessly clean, full-bodied and sonorous and at the same time as inwardly lively, as passionately urgent and lyrically shaped - she practices a kind of musical perfection that everyone Leaving virtuosity behind, proclaimed as a means to penetrate to the true inner, to the glowing human message, to enchant and shake us with pure, flowing heart energy. It's no wonder that Johanna Martzy enjoys iconic status in professional circles and that the few original LPs that have survived are sold at top prices.

-- Rondo (Germany, Attila Csampai)

For five decades Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) held a central position in the musical world. That centrality was reflected in a series of top orchestral and operatic posts and in his interpretations, free of self-regarding eccentricities. His modest but highly effective conducting technique also made him the ideal recording artist. Sawallisch was a Bavarian born in Munich, city of orchestras and a great opera company, which he headed for 21 years. He started his career as an outstanding pianist and remained a sought-after accompanist to great Lieder singers and instrumentalists. Volume 1 of a complete conspectus of his Warner Classics recordings (made for Electrola and EMI Classics between 1954 to 1997) includes wonderful Lieder and song collaborations, as well as famous concerto accompaniments for eminent soloists and a heartwarming traversal of Schubert's secular vocal and sacred choral music with Bavarian Radio colleagues. But the main focus among the 65 discs is on his symphonic achievements: Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and Dvor�k - the latter's Eighth Symphony was his first published recording, from 1954. Richard Strauss, an early influence, is strongly represented. This 65CD-box brings together all the non-operatic recordings that the German conductor and pianist Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1954 to 1997 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics).

This box set comprises all the operas and sacred works Otto Klemperer conducted for EMI Columbia and HMV. Oratorios by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Handel are accompanied by operas of Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner. There are also rehearsals and listening playback sessions for the recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni and a Bonus CD with recollections from artists who sang in Klemperer's opera performances. Otto Klemperer deeply loved both the theatricality of opera and the spirituality of oratorios, and these performances from his great Indian Summer represent the fruits of his lifetime of thought and experience in this repertoire.

The German-born conductor Otto Klemperer, a towering figure in the musical history of the 20th century, died at the age of 88 on July 8th 1973, so 2023 will mark the 50th anniversary of his death. His complete recordings on Warner Classics catalogue are being made available for the first time in 2 huge separate boxes; the first volume with the Symphonic Works, Concertos & Lieder (95CD) will be released in June 2023. All recordings are remastered in HD 192/24 from original sources. Beethoven's Symphonies by Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra are one of the most well-known and acclaimed versions of these works, and the "Choral" Symphony with no doubt one of it's highlights.

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