Ricci’s recording of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto falls between Jascha Heifetz’s two (1935 and 1959) and straddles the demonic energy of the first and the icy mystery of the second. Decca’s engineers (Cyril Windebank and Gordon Parry, in this case) reproduce the sharp bite of the brass and clarity of the strings. They also project Ricci forward so as to capture the cleanness of his playing and the richness of his tone.

In her previous recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Nicola Benedetti displayed a varied repertoire that ranged from works by Vaughan Williams and Tavener to MacMillan and Szymanowski, which are not exactly eccentric choices but somewhat outside the usual programming for young virtuoso violinists. Yet the time has come for Benedetti to take on the blockbusters of her profession, and the violin concertos by Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky and Max Bruch on this 2011 release are central to the genre.

A pupil of Tchaikovsky, who called him the ‘Russian Bach’, Sergey Taneyev is best known today for his four symphonies, although he also composed a sizeable body of chamber music, including nine complete String Quartets. Quartet No. 9 is a memorably melodic work, while the beautifully crafted Quartet No. 6, his last completed quartet, is rather more austere, though marked by a playful Jig, and even more masterful in construction.

Dvorák composed four piano trios, and all of them are fine works. The very last, the so-called "Dumky" Trio, has eclipsed the others in popularity, which is a pity, particularly with respect to the Trio No. 3 in F minor. This work, composed at exactly the same time as the Seventh Symphony, is clearly the finest work of its type since Beethoven–and that includes the three trios of Brahms. Perfectly proportioned, emotionally intense, and chock full of incredible tunes, it grabs you from the first note and never lets you go.

Brahms was 48 years old and at the height of his powers when he completed his Piano Concerto No. 2. The Olympian B flat Concerto is, famously, not only one of the most technically challenging of all piano concertos to play but also one of the longest and a supreme test of the soloist’s technique and stamina. Not far behind it in terms of the challenges it presents the soloist with, is the early Burleske for piano and orchestra by Richard Strauss. Dedicated to Hans von Bülow as a thank-you present, Bülow however, refused to learn it, considering it to be ‘unplayable’. This may have had something to with the fact that Bülow’s hands could barely span an octave – an insuperable obstacle in a work that demands superlative, stamina-sapping octaves - but which begs the question why the composer should write something so physically unsuitable for his mentor. This is repertoire in which Joseph Moog excels.

The 2nd of September 2010 marks Maestro Seiji Ozawa’s 75th birthday. This new 11-CD set presents Seiji Ozawa in a wide variety of symphonic repertory with the orchestra’s with which he has been most closely associated since the early 1970s – from the San Francisco Symphony in 1972 in a programme of music centred round Romeo and Juliet, through his twenty-nine years at the Boston Symphony, to the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics and the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan – a celebration of a truly international Maestro.

Recorded live in April 2013 at the Royal Opera House in London, Sony Classical is proud to present Verdi: Nabucco starring the legendary Placido Domingo in his debut in the title role. Conducted by Nicola Luisotti, the release celebrates the bicentenary year of Verdi’s birth.

During his long and exceptionally fruitful creative life, Richard Strauss (18641949) composed only a few works for the cello. Only three have survived and small as that number may seem, those cello works are critical to the composers development. Daniel Müller-Schott sees the early Sonata for cello and piano op. 6 and the late tone poem Don Quixote op. 35 as marking the path that was to lead Strauss within the space of a few years from Romanticism to the Modern era in music. The cellist highlights this watershed in Strausss artistic development with his own transcriptions, expressly made for this CD, of the Lieder Zueignung op. 10/1 and Ich trage meine Minne op. 32/1.

The good news keeps on coming from the bow of Italian-Scots youngster Nicola Benedetti, who takes on the king of all the warhorses, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, for her second album, and delivers a fresh, well-worked-out interpretation. Benedetti, with expert support from the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under James MacMillan, avoids any overwrought quality that might have been brought on by the pressures of making a high-profile recording in a shrinking major-label classical environment.

A pupil of Tchaikovsky, whom he replaced at the Moscow Conservatory, Sergey Taneyev was a virtuoso pianist and a teacher of Scriabin and Rachmaninov. Although as a composer Taneyev is best known today for his four symphonies, he also composed a sizeable body of chamber music, including six String Quartets. These beautifully crafted works are marked by technical assurance at every turn, as well as dramatic inspiration and intense lyricism. The masterly five-movement Quartet No. 1, in fact Taneyev’s Fifth, includes two notable slow movements, while the lighter Quartet No. 3 features a graceful theme with eight variations, alternately playful and contemplative.

It was during the early early 1960s that Willi Boskovsky put us under the spell of Viennese dances played in reductions for two violins, viola and double-bass. This represents less than the full orchestral forces for which the pieces were written, but it is the sort of ensemble that might have been used for a Vienna house ball of the 1830s. What one loses in the lack of woodwind effects one tends to gain from the concentration on the professionalism and delicacy of the composers' writing for strings.

May morning in Oxford, and the Berliner Philharmoniker join in the celebratory mood abroad in the university city’s medieval streets with this concert in Sir Christopher Wren’s glorious Sheldonian Theatre. For 20 years, the Philharmoniker have given a May Day concert in one of Europe’s great historic cities, and here, under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, the Berlin players thrill the Oxford audience with the sonorous Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, a deeply-felt account of Elgar’s autumnal Cello Concerto by the young American cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and a rousing performance of Brahms’s life-affi rming First Symphony.

Joshua Bell, a violinist widely-admired by audiences and critics, was born fortuitously in Bloomington, Indiana, home of the Indiana University School of Music, which eventually assumed a decisive role in Bell's musical development. Bell was exposed to music from an early age and began his violin studies with Mimi Zweig. Bell's talents developed rapidly; he made his debut as a soloist in performance with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra at the age of seven.

Following the success of The Dream of Gerontius in 1900 and The Apostles in 1903, the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival commissioned Elgar to produce another large oratorio for the 1906 festival. The Kingdom continues the narrative of the lives of Jesus’ disciples, depicting the community of the early church, Pentecost, and the events of the next few days. Although less frequently performed than The Dream of Gerontius, The Kingdom is considered one of Elgar’s greatest choral works, and deserves to rank alongside it. This re-release of the 1989 recording also features Sursum Corda and Sospiri, two short, reflective instrumental pieces, release honors the legacy of the late English conductor Sir Richard Hickox.

For the specific atmosphere of Oberon Michael Hofstetter found it crucial that the performance was played on the period instruments Weber composed for. In Giessen, he worked with four natural horns, natural trumpets, finely tuned trombones and not least flutes made of wood instead of metal. This produced an inexhaustible wealth of acoustic colors, enabling us to sensually experience what might really be meant by the concept of German Romanticism on the musical level. Michael Hofstetter conducts at many well known opera houses, orchestras and festivals, include the Bavarian, the Hamburg, the Hanover and the Stuttgart State Operas, Theater an der Wien, the Royal Opera Copenhagen, the Welsh National Opera, the English National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Canadian Opera Company Toronto and many others. Future engagements will see him again at the International Handel Festival in Halle, with Orchestre National d‘Île de France in Paris and at the International Gluck Festival Nuremberg.