Limited 96 CD set. Conductor, pianist, composer and media personality, Andr� Previn excelled in a diversity of musical genres and idioms. A child prodigy in his native Berlin, he moved to the USA in 1939 and made his early career in Hollywood, winning four Academy Awards. His time as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (1968-1979) established him as a major interpreter of symphonic repertoire, particularly Russian, French and British music - "The very definition of good conducting," wrote Gramophone of his celebrated LSO version of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. The scope of Previn's relationship with the LSO is duly reflected in this 96CD set, comprising his entire EMI and Teldec discographies, as is his special rapport with such orchestras as the Pittsburgh Symphony, Chicago Symphony and Wiener Philharmoniker. The collection also showcases his talents as a pianist, in both classical and jazz mode, and offers insights into his character and art with an audio documentary, Andr� Previn - A Memoir.

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."

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."

Nicholas Angelich's new album is dedicated to Prokofiev, the so-called unclassifiable artist- considered revolutionary by some, neo-classical by others. Came to public attention as a virtuoso pianist, Sergei Prokofiev left a fascinating body of work, that of a composer torn between two societies, between the culture of his homeland and the unchallenged culture of the West.

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.

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."

Internationally recognized as one of the most important guitarists of our time, Manuel Barrueco has become renowned as a recitalist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician of the highest level for decades. His supreme musicality, his mastery, precision, finesse, the richness of his sound palette, the extent of his repertoire - from baroque to contemporary and popular music - have earned him acclaim on the most prestigious stages around the world. This box-set brings together his entire legacy for Warner Classics and bears witness to his unique artistry which prompted the New York Times to write of him"... a warmth and a singing quality that would undoubtedly have made Segovia smile".

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.

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG / Schubert: Complete Secular Choral Works (7CD) - A voyage of discovery through a lesser-known area of Schubert's rich and prolific output, this collection comprises seven themed CDs: Transience; Love; Eternity; Heroism; Nature; Celebrations, and Circle of Friends. "Each disc has it's share of the treasures," wrote Gramophone, "The Arnold Schoenberg Choir is a fine body of musicians... they show a virtually unflawed beauty and opulence of tone." Vocal soloists include Ruth Ziesak, Angelika Kirchschlager, Christoph Pr�gardien and Robert Holl, and among the featured pianists are Andr�s Schiff and Andreas Staier. This complete edition of Schubert's secular choral works won major prizes in Germany, France, Belgium and Japan on it's first release in 1997. WARNER CLASSICS

l had asked the composer's wife what it would take to make Dmitri write a cello concerto. She replied that one should never beg or ask Shostakovich to write anything. I heeded her advice, and therefore only learnt from the paper the exciting news that he had actually composed a cello concerto. When my friend, the pianist Alexander Dedyukhin, and I played through the Concerto to Shostakovich we were asked insistently whether we liked it. After I had finally convinced him of how much l did, he asked whether he could dedicate the Concerto to me. I therefore feel very lucky to be the only soloist to have performed under his direction. - After I had finished learning Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto, Dedyukhin and I visited Shostakovich near Yalta, where he and his wife were staying. We ran through the Concerto, and afterwards I felt so elated that I wrote a letter proclaiming my admiration for Shostakovich, but Dmitri never mentioned having read it and I did not think it prudent to enquire further. In terms of virtuosity, the Second Concerto is less striking than the First, but it's profundity is second to none. In the first, mainly lyrical section, there is an immensely powerful climax when the cello literally tears at one's soul. The second section contains an old Odessa song Come and buy my bagels", and in it one can hear piercing pain with an intensity that is almost Mahlerian. This performance took place in the presence of Shostakovich, who was on that day celebrating his 60th birthday.' - Mstislav Rostropovich. We are fortunate that these rare recordings (1961, 1966) by Mstislav Rostropovich have actually survived the social and political vicissitudes that have beset Russia from Stalin's era to the present day.

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

Limited 11 CD set. "In his warm and serene person all the essential qualities of the great interpretative artist were blended in perfect harmony." Dennis Brain's life was cut short in 1957 when he was just 36, but he had already assured his reputation as the greatest horn-player of the 20th century. He remains an exemplar for his successors today. "Technical problems did not exist for him," continued the eulogy written by Walter Legge, EMI's legendary producer and founder of the Philharmonia Orchestra. "Over his instrument's whole range he had a mastery of intonation, of legato, of staccato, of dynamic range and, above all, of expressiveness." This 11CD collection presents all his Warner recordings as concerto soloist and chamber and ensemble player - including music composed with him in mind - and his most notable contributions to symphonic, choral and operatic works. He performs in several CD premieres - music by Handel, Strauss, Richard Arnell and Norman Forber Kay - and a 1953 recording now released for the first time: Vincent d'Indy's wind septet Chanson et danses.

The Beethoven concerto is a piece of overwhelming power," says violinist Vilde Frang. "It is somehow more than music - the dimension of it feels almost cosmic. The force of this concerto takes me by surprise, over and over again." Frang juxtaposes Beethoven's epic, lyrical work with Stravinsky's compact violin concerto, which pays spiky tribute to 18th century models. The conductor is Pekka Kuusisto, himself an adventurous violinist, in his role as Artistic Best Friend of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. "It was the chamber musical qualities of the Beethoven concerto that provided the key for me," says Frang. "The violin is constantly 'feeding' and playing around the orchestra... In it's own way, the Stravinsky too engages the soloist in a constant dialogue with the orchestra. With Pekka Kuusisto and the Bremen players, I really feel in such a comfort zone... There is a feeling of having everything to gain by gathering together, coming together.