Postcards from Vienna: drawn largely from the supreme players of the Wiener Philharmoniker, collected here are the Decca recordings of Viennese chamber music ensembles, including the New Vienna Octet, Vienna Wind Soloists, Wiener Waldhornverein and Vienna Flute Trio, many making their first international appearance on CD. Led by clarinetist Alfred Boskovsky, the first line-up of the Vienna Octet made it's last recording for Decca in 1972, but Boskovsky was behind the revival of the group's name, having already chosen the young members of the Vienna Philharmonic who would carry on the work of the ensemble and it's traditions of superbly mellifluous, silver-toned playing.

Postcards from Vienna: drawn largely from the supreme players of the Wiener Philharmoniker, collected here are the Decca recordings of Viennese chamber music ensembles, including the New Vienna Octet, Vienna Wind Soloists, Wiener Waldhornverein and Vienna Flute Trio, many making their first international appearance on CD. Led by clarinetist Alfred Boskovsky, the first line-up of the Vienna Octet made it's last recording for Decca in 1972, but Boskovsky was behind the revival of the group's name, having already chosen the young members of the Vienna Philharmonic who would carry on the work of the ensemble and it's traditions of superbly mellifluous, silver-toned playing.

The 17th and 18th centuries marked the era of Enlightenment, overseas exploration, unprecedented European economic expansion and a flourishing of art and culture, not to mention the birth of the greatest composers in history. From concertos to fantasias, suites to sonatas, Brilliant Classics presents a comprehensive and concise overview of this innovative and groundbreaking period in musical history, the Baroque era. The set opens with Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni and his famous Concerti a5, in which he was the first Italian composer to use the oboe as the solo instrument in a concerto.

Johann Ladislaus Dussek (1760-1812) was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the foremost keyboard performers and composers of his age. Over a span of three decades, Dussek completed nearly 300 compositions, most of which involve a keyboard instrument. The sonata as a genre holds a special position in his overall oeuvre: keyboard sonatas were among his first published pieces in the early 1780s, and the sonata Op. 77 in F minor was to be his last work before his death in 1812.This set is the result of an extensive recording project using the combined resources of eight excellent fortepianists to produce the first comprehensive recording of Dussek's keyboard sonatas on period instruments.

A Limited Edition, Original Jackets collection showcasing the artistry of the magnificent American soprano, Kathleen Battle. Kathleen Battle enraptured opera audiences of the 1980s and 1990s. Here was a lyric soprano combining unsurpassable beauty of tone with a keen musical intelligence, a way with words and a communicative warmth that drew listeners to Strauss and spirituals alike. She has the easy phrasing of a great jazz singer combined with the breath, breadth and precise projection of a trained voice. James Levine coached her at the Metropolitan Opera, and when he accompanied her at the 1984 Salzburg Festival and DG recorded the recital as Battle's debut solo album, nothing less than a phenomenon was launched.

A Limited Edition, Original Jackets collection showcasing the artistry of the magnificent American soprano, Kathleen Battle. Kathleen Battle enraptured opera audiences of the 1980s and 1990s. Here was a lyric soprano combining unsurpassable beauty of tone with a keen musical intelligence, a way with words and a communicative warmth that drew listeners to Strauss and spirituals alike. She has the easy phrasing of a great jazz singer combined with the breath, breadth and precise projection of a trained voice. James Levine coached her at the Metropolitan Opera, and when he accompanied her at the 1984 Salzburg Festival and DG recorded the recital as Battle's debut solo album, nothing less than a phenomenon was launched.

Gil Shaham took up the violin aged seven and a mere three years later debuted as soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Less than a year later, Shaham performed with Israel's foremost orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta. Shaham has since performed with many of the world's leading orchestras. His recordings for Deutsche Grammaphon reveal a broad repertoire and not least an affinity to the music of the twentieth century.

The composer interprets himself, and don´t you do anything to help him! Swarowsky began his conducting career at the Stuttgart Opera in 1927, this after a short period as a répétiteur at the Vienna Volksoper. He then moved on to Hamburg and succeeded Erich Kleiber in Berlin. He was placed under a conducting ban in Germany in 1936 (his father's side of the family was of Jewish background) but was able to continue his career in Zurich for a few years. During World War II he had to limit his work to opera assignments for the Bavarian State Opera and the Salzburg Festival.

Limited Edition 7CD box set features seven classic Mercury Living Presence albums, newly remastered and compiled for the first time to celebrate the legacy of Greek pianist Gina Bachauer, who thrilled audiences and challenged stereotypes wherever she went. Born in Athens in 1913, Gina Bachauer studied Bach with a pupil of Busoni; Brahms with Rachmaninov; and Ravel with Cortot. Can any other pianist, alive or dead, lay claim to so rich a treasury of study and instruction? That all three luminaries of the piano regarded her worth teaching tells it's own story. In mid-life, she suffered a series of catastrophes: her family killed and property destroyed in the Nazi occupation of Greece; then the deaths of her first husband in 1950 and her father two years later.

Decca's 2015 limited-edition box set of the complete Argo recordings of the King's College Choir of Cambridge, directed by David Willcocks, consists of 29 CDs spanning the period from 1957 to 1973. The albums, presented with their original jacket art, offer some of the choir's finest performances, which include three recordings of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols (1954, 1958, 1964), anthems by Gibbons, Blow, and Handel, masses by Byrd, Taverner, Haydn, Tye, and Blow, and other great choral works by Bach, Allegri, Palestrina, Tallis, Vivaldi, Howells, and Vaughan Williams. The choir is world famous for its purity of tone and beautiful blend, and under Willcocks' masterly direction it became the exemplar of British choral singing, unmatched by any other ensemble of men and boys.

The first edition to comprise all of Helmut Walcha's recordings on Archiv Produktion, Deutsche Grammophon and Philips. Commemorating the 30th anniversary of Walcha's passing (11 August), it includes both the stereo (1956-1971) and the mono cycles (1947-1952) of Bach's complete works for organ; harpsichord recordings consisting of the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Violin Sonatas BWV 1014-1019 with Henryk Szeryng, the latter originally issued on Philips; plus other organ works from the early North German repertoire, including Bruhns, Scheidt, Buxtehude, and Sweelinck. The mastermind of Walcha's recordings was legendary producer Erich Thienhaus, a prolific recording producer and progenitor of the Tonmeister profession itself.

How do you describe Leopold Stokowski in one word? Showman, impresario, visionary, firebrand, agent provocateur, magician? Take your pick as he all that and more. It’s 40 years since the passing of one of the most colorful characters in Decca’s roster and one of the most indefatigable innovators in music performance history. His complete recordings for Decca/Phase 4 are presented together for the first time, with a bonus audio documentary featuring an interview with the maestro himself, in a handsome Limited Edition 23-CD boxed set.

James Galway is universally regarded as the supreme interpreter of the classical flute repertoire as well as a consummate entertainer whose appeal crosses all musical boundaries. Now for the first time ever, all of Sir James's recordings for RCA Red Seal are being issued together in a single box set.
With The Man with the Golden Flute performing the whole spectrum of classics from Baroque to modern, including virtually every important concerto and other solo music composed for his instrument, plus flute transcriptions from every corner of the repertoire and the globe the range and comprehensiveness of this set is staggering. Sir James s list of collaborators is a musical Who's Who in its own right: names like Martha Argerich, Cleo Laine, Andr Previn, Neville Marriner, Lorin Maazel and Michael Tilson Thomas as well as Galway s wife and fellow flautist Jeanne Galway, the Canadian Brass, Tokyo String Quartet and, needless to say, The Chieftains.

Deutsche Grammophon presents a complete survey of Sir John Eliot Gardiner's recordings for Achiv Produktion and DG. Orchestras & Choirs: Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantic, the Wiener Philharmoniker, NDR-Chor, NDR Sinfonieorchester, and the London Symphony Orchestra. Soloists include: Anne Sofie von Otter, Ian Bostridge, Barbara Bonney, Emma Kirkby, Mark Padmore, Bernarda Fink, Magdalena Kozena, Bryn Terfel, and many more.

The Karajan Official Remastered Edition comprises 101 CDs across 13 box sets containing official remasterings of the finest recordings the Austrian conductor made for EMI between 1946 and 1984, and which are now a jewel of the Warner Classics catalogue.
For many, Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) – hailed early in his career as ‘Das Wunder Karajan’ (The Karajan Miracle) and known in the early 1960s as ‘the music director of Europe’ – remains the ultimate embodiment of the maestro.