This CD is going to provide unexpected delight for lovers of the Late-Romantics. Victor de Sabata is remembered as a remarkably dynamic conductor who made some stunning records with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Decca in the 1940s and 50s. It is not so well known that he was also a composer. Here are three ravishing symphonic poems from the early 1920s, substantial in length and gorgeously scored for an enormous orchestra. Everybody who responds to Respighi, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Strauss and Busoni is going to love this disc. The conductor, Aldo Ceccato, is de Sabata's son-in-law and has long championed these scores around the world. Here he directs de Sabata's 'own' orchestra, the LPO, in their first commercial recordings. Sonically, this disc is state-of-the-art.

GRAMMY award-winning Nicola Benedetti’s new album on Decca Classics explores music by Britain’s best loved composer, Edward Elgar. The centrepiece is his vast Violin Concerto in B minor. Op. 61 coupled with three short works for violin and piano: Salut d’Amour, Sospiri and Chanson de Nuit.

'The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music' is a selection of the most beloved classical works, now recorded by The London Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the world's leading ensembles, under noted conductor David Parry. The aim has been to create a collection that is ideal as an introduction to classical music for the beginner, while offering outstanding new recordings for the connoisseur. Never before has an orchestra with the stature of the LPO recorded a collection this comprehensive, giving their own interpretations of 'the classics'.

An offering of two iconic British cello concertos, recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and distinguished cellist Li-Wei Qin, separated by an atmospheric and musically detailed recording of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes conducted by Zhang Yi.

Composed in 2019, this work reflects MacMillan's Scottish roots and Catholic faith, embracing a Scots Gaelic lullaby, English poetry, Latin texts and Bible passages recounting the Nativity. The work, commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, is split into two parts with seven movements each. Both parts start and finish with short orchestral movements, creating a palindromic structure. Soprano Lucy Crowe and baritone Roderick Williams shine in this performance, both performing two arias each and singing with the London Philharmonic Choir in the Tableaux.

In this world-premiere recording, Andrew Gourlay conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in his new Parsifal Suite, a deftly constructed concert piece of orchestral highlights from Wagner’s Parsifal, published by Schott Music. Gourlay has sought to encapsulate Parsifal’s main orchestral elements into a seamless suite, resulting in a sumptuous 45-minute work that allows Wagner’s exquisite music to be enjoyed in a new way.

First and only available recording of this most anticipated work by one of India's best known composers, Ravi Shankar. Featuring the dazzling sitar playing of Anoushka Shankar - whose recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon label include the Grammy nominated, Live at Carnegie Hall. In this live recording of the work's premiere, David Murphy conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Ravi Shankar's daughter Anoushka on sitar.

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart's timeless opera buffa, is one of the greatest of all operatic masterpieces. It is based on Beaumarchai's comedy Le Marriage de Figaro and tells the tale of the servant Figaro, who is about to marry the maid Susanna. Count Almaviva, keeping an eye on Susanna himself, tries to prevent this marriage with the help of Bortolo, the doctor, but is continually thwarted.

French cellist Maurice Gendron (1920-1990). His origins were poor and he hailed from Nice. At the age of three he took up music, starting with the violin, but his mother then gave him a quarter-sized cello and he was drawn to it immediately. The rest is history. At ten he was introduced to Emanuel Feuermann, and at twelve he was admitted to the Nice Conservatory, winning first prize at fourteen. Then it was on to the Paris Conservatoire to study with Gérard Hekking. Whilst there he supported himself by selling newspapers. When war broke out he was declared unfit for active service due to malnourishment, so he became a member of the resistance.

Nonesuch Records releases the late Henryk Górecki’s final composition, Symphony No. 4, Tansman Episodes, on January 22, 2016. The recording was made during the 2014 world premiere performance at Royal Festival Hall with co-commissioner London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrey Boreyko. The piece, which pays homage to Górecki’s fellow Polish composer Alexsander Tansman, was incomplete at the time of Górecki’s 2010 death and thus missed its previously scheduled premiere. However the score had precise indications for orchestration, which Górecki’s son Mikolaj, also a composer, used to complete it. The Daily Telegraph said the piece "caps Górecki's reputation as an orchestral composer, but it also contains some surprises. The music … features some brutal juxtapositions of massively powerful music with slow, intimate passages for solo instruments, including prominent parts for piano and organ".

This is the first commercially available recording of Tippett's first opera in over 50 years, recorded in a landmark performance conducted by Tippett enthusiast Edward Gardner. Performed at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, this performance was a thrilling start to Edward Gardner's tenure as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Concert Overture is a hugely gifted young composer's homage to Richard Strauss, and fully worthy of its model in impetuousness, rich sonority and close-woven polyphony. The Second Symphony is no less rich but more disciplined, with Reger's influence added to (and modifying) that of Strauss, and with Szymanowski's own high colouring, sinuous melody and tonal adventurousness now in their first maturity. The Infatuated Muezzin songs are a high point of his middle period, Debussian harmony and florid orientalising arabesques fusing to an aching voluptuousness, colour now applied with the refinement of a miniaturist.

Maria Stuarda is one third of the so-called "three queen" trilogy that defined much of the career of Beverly Sills (along with Lucia, the three Hoffmann heroines, and Manon) in the early 1970s. It was quite an undertaking, and each–Stuarda, Anna Bolena, and Roberto Devereux–was recorded by the since-disapppeared ABC Audio Treasury Series. For reasons opera lovers have been wondering about for years, the recordings went out of print pretty quickly; but now, handsomely remastered, they are making their first appearance on CD, both individually and as a three-opera set. Stuarda also has been recorded by Joan Sutherland and Janet Baker (in a version Donizetti prepared for the lower-voiced Maria Malibran), and there are at least three "private" sets I know of with Montserrat Caballé in the title role.

The first of three volumes focusing on Stravinsky’s music conducted by Vladimir Jurowski includes his Opus One, the Symphony in E-flat, unmistakably Russian and that young Igor was a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. It’s a likeable piece, leaning to Borodin in places, confident and imaginative, with a featherlight Scherzo, an intensely eloquent Largo, and a Finale of Imperial swagger, handsomely brought off by the LPO and Jurowski in immediate and clear sound, the very ideal of the Royal Festival Hall. Mezzo Angharad Lyddon is excellent in Faun and Shepherdess, straight out of the Tchaikovsky songbook, and anticipations of the Stravinsky to come (Firebird anyway) surface with Scherzo fantastique, given a buoyant outing, with fantasy and clarity in equal measure. The ‘lost and found’ Funeral Song – interesting because Stravinsky wrote it (in memoriam Rimsky) rather than for its musical worth, although Jurowski finds more than some previous performances (the piece went viral a few years ago). A shame that this first disc does not include Fireworks, Stravinsky’s Opus Four, for then his first five Opuses would be together, although that way of cataloguing his works would cease.

During the years from 1815 to 1822 when his career centered on Naples, Rossini composed a sequence of works for the Teatro San Carlo, which at that time boasted an outstanding orchestra and a company of resident singers that was the leading ensemble available anywhere. A string of masterpieces resulted, including Ermione - which is without doubt one of the composer's greatest operas, despite it being perhaps the least immediately successful. Ermione was received with incomprehension at its sole performance in 1819 and was never revived in Rossini's lifetime. Since its first stage revival in Pesaro in 1987, Ermione has been recognized as a lost masterpiece. Set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, the opera's novelties begin with an overture interrupted by a choral lament of Trojan prisoners. Tension and staggering originality are maintained right to the very end.