On Live At Maybeck Recital Hall, Volume Seventeen, the staggeringly brilliant, hyper-stylistic, and masterfully panoramic American jazz piano icon Jaki Byard steps completely solo onto the stage to deliver a breathtakingly historic, uninhibited, and masterfully synchronized recital document. Recorded live in September 1991 at the acoustically flawless Berkeley venue and released by Concord Jazz, this monumental milestone serves as a definitive portrait of one of the most criminally underrated multi-era virtuosos in creative music history. Spanning nearly 56 minutes of immaculate high-fidelity spatial design, the 7-part continuous landscape operates with an intense, lightning-fast, and beautifully balanced kinetic energy. Unaccompanied by a rhythm section, Byard deconstructs the entire timeline of jazz keyboard architecture—seamlessly jumping from pristine stride mechanics to abstract, explosive post-bop geometry. The performance fires off magnificent tracking highlights like a volcanic, hard-strutting opener Hello Young Lovers, a deeply respectful stride workout on Tribute To The Ticklers, an expansive three-song Collage Of Thelonious Monk, and his own sprawling masterpiece, the 14-minute Family Suite. Driven by Byard's blinding right-hand runs, thunderous block-chord velocity, and deep historical omniscience, this archive remains an indispensable masterpiece for serious mainstream bop purists and solo piano collectors worldwide.

The SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart is one of the few choirs enjoying an international reputation. Their latest recording has “America” as its subject - and presents a tremendously wide range of forms and expressions, from music written under the influence of European masters to works that boldly explore experiments in aesthetic reorientation. The big names of the U.S. composers are of course represented, including Leonard Bernstein with his single a cappella work, the “Missa Brevis”, Steve Reich with his minimalist “Proverb” and John Cage with some of his late “Number Pieces”. Everything is presented at the highest artistic level, with ravishing sonics that cannot be beat.

This 16-disc set contains what is without a doubt the most distinguished collection of Mahler performances ever to have been assembled in one place. DG has sensibly collected all of Bernstein's Mahler for Polygram labels, including the London "Das Lied von der Erde," and all of the orchestral song cycles: "Song of a Wayfarer," "Kindertotenlieder," "Rückert-Lieder," and "Des Knaben Wunderhorn." All of these recordings have been issued separately to general critical acclaim, and despite a veritable warehouse of new Mahler discs in the '90s, Bernstein's versions by and large still reign supreme.

Electrifying conductor, brilliant composer, gifted pianist, inspiring teacher: Leonard Bernstein is one of the most famous and influential musicians of all time. Highlights of this two-disc sampling of the Maestro’s legendary recordings for Deutsche Grammophon include his incandescent interpretations of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mahler, composers for whom he felt a profound affinity. And Bernstein’s lifelong dedication to American music is vividly illustrated with Gershwin, Barber and, of course, his own iconic West Side Story.

To celebrate the epic recording career of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Deutsche Grammophon presents a comprehensive box set that brings together for the first time all of his recordings for DG, Decca and Philips; in addition to the Westminster/Melodija recordings from their archives. Presented with the original jackets, this limited edition 37CD box features legendary recordings with Karajan, Argerich, Mutter, Britten, Richter, Serkin and more!

Universal extends its series of discount-priced "best of" compilations with the unwieldy name "20th Century Masters/The Millennium Collection" to the quasi-classical realm with this Leonard Bernstein entry, which treads a fine line a bit awkwardly as a crossover release. Bernstein was, indeed, a popular composer, with a brace of hit songs (and one or two perennially popular cast albums) derived from his scores for the musicals West Side Story, On the Town, and Candide, and one towering achievement as a soundtrack composer, for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, to his credit; and he was also a vastly successful and popular recording artist in the classical field.

Hailed as one of the most important musicians in America in the 20th-Century, legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein conducts the momentous collection of Beethoven’s nine symphonies in this impressive 6 CD boxset for Sony Classics. Recorded whilst Bernstein was at the peak of his musical capabilities during his famous spell as director of Music at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Beethoven symphonies provide the listener with an array of emotions, from the serious nature of the Fifth Symphony to the Third ‘Eroica’ Symphony, to the Fourth Symphony ‘Pastorale’ and to the passionate ninth, the ‘Chorale’. This collection of works by the most well-known classical music composer of the most famous and important works in classical music makes this boxset a ‘must-have’ for the classical music lover.

Here are three 20th-century violin concertos written within a 30-year period in three totally different styles, played by a soloist equally at home in all of them. Bernstein's Serenade, the earliest and most accessible work, takes its inspiration from Plato's Symposium; its five movements, musical portraits of the banquet's guests, represent different aspects of love as well as running the gamut of Bernstein's contrasting compositional styles. Rorem's concerto sounds wonderful. Its six movements have titles corresponding to their forms or moods; their character ranges from fast, brilliant, explosive to slow, passionate, melodious. Philip Glass's concerto, despite its conventional three movements and tonal, consonant harmonies, is the most elusive. Written in the "minimalist" style, which for most ordinary listeners is an acquired taste, it is based on repetition of small running figures both for orchestra and soloist, occasionally interrupted by long, high, singing lines in the violin against or above the orchestra's pulsation.

This 7CD set is the fruit of the love affair that developed in Paris between Leonard Bernstein and the Orchestre National de France in the 1970s. Beside long-admired studio recordings, featuring Mstislav Rostropovich and Alexis Weissenberg among the soloists, it presents live performances completely new to the catalogue: a 1975 programme to celebrate Ravel’s centenary – with Bernstein himself as soloist in the G major piano concerto – and orchestral suites taken from two of Bernstein’s most celebrated and brilliant works, both infused with jazz: the film score On the Waterfront and the landmark Broadway musical West Side Story.