Daishin Kashimoto, Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Zvi Plesser and Éric Le Sage, who have been close musical partners for years, joined forces once again at the Salon de Provence Chamber Music Festival to record this programme devoted to Viennese composers of the early twentieth century. The most famous and innovative of these are represented: Schoenberg with his Kammersymphonie no.1, Mahler with two lieder transcribed for flute and piano, Zemlinsky’s Clarinet Trio and several pieces by Berg. A disc that encapsulates both the exhaustion of a bygone Romantic age and the avant-garde promises of a modern world still to be built…

Introducing an ambitious debut release, Warner Classics brings you a teriffic album with Baritone Huw Montague Wendell who flexes his extensive variety of talent and style! 'Contempation' stretches across three centuries, a journey into the transformation of musical dramas of opera, operetta, lied and Broadway musicals. Joining the stage is Canadian soprano Elisabeth Boudreault in which she and Huw perform a duet from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

Vladimir Jurowski and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin continue their exploration of Mahler with a new recording of Das Lied von der Erde, on which Dame Sarah Connolly and Robert Dean Smith provide the vocal contributions. Residing somewhere between symphony and song cycle, Das Lied is one of Mahler’s most profound and loved works, marking an important step in the composer’s career, as well as in his private life. Jurowski approaches the piece as Mahler’s deliberate move from a “heroic” Beethovenian model towards a more “lyrical”, Schubertian attitude.

In 1903, Gustav Mahler conducted his own work with the Concertgebouw Orchestra for the first time. He was delighted with orchestra, choirs and audiences: "The musical culture of this country is amazing! How these people can listen!" The collaboration with the orchestra lasted until his death in 1911 and established the orchestra's Mahler tradition. Since then, all chief conductors of the RCO have maintained the special relationship with Mahler's music. On May 9, 2025, the RCO opens the Concertgebouw Mahler Festival with Mahler's 1st Symphony under the direction of designated chief conductor Klaus Mäkelä. For this occasion, the Box Mahler - The Chief Conductor Edition appears with all Mahler symphonies of his predecessors Eduard van Beinum, Willem Mengelberg, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly, Mariss Jansons and Daniele Gatti, including The Song of the Earth and Deryck Cookes version of the 10th Symphony.

“For Mahler,” Sir Simon Rattle has said, "the symphony is where you can tell the most important truths.” The composer’s works have been crucial to his career – indeed, it was the epic Symphony No. 2 that first inspired him to become a musician. Spanning nearly two decades, these recordings of the complete symphonies, including Deryck Cooke’s completion of No. 10, were made with the two ensembles most closely identified with Rattle’s name: the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

It was in 1920 that Schoenberg undertook a transcription for small orchestra of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (a work he particularly venerated), intended for the Viennese Society for Private Musical Performances. But he was unable to complete it, and it was only in 1983 that the musicologist Rainer Riehn took up where Schoenberg had left off and produced a finished version. The result is quite extraordinary: Schoenberg not only managed to reproduce all the original sonorities, he also brought out the extreme density of the score.

The shimmering string harmonics at the opening of Gustav Mahlers First Symphony bring to mind the suspended breath of spring, and will have signaled even to the very first audiences that a new symphonic era was being ushered in. Soon enough the composer introduces some of the elements that would become key components of his musical language: sounds of nature (here cuckoo calls) are combined with quasi-militaristic fanfares and high-art chromatic wanderings in cellos, as if to illustrate Mahlers view of the symphony as an all-embracing art form. The symphony, which the composer originally gave the subtitle Titan, borrows extensively from the song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

This massive new reissue from Eugene Ormandy’s stereo discography collects all the Columbia Masterworks recordings he made in Philadelphia between the early 1960s and early 1980s. Sony Classical’s new 94-CD box set once again demonstrates what noted critic Jed Distler, reviewing the previous instalment of this ambitious project “The Columbia Stereo Collection 1958–1963” in Gramophone’s December 2023 issue, characterized as “the Philadelphia Orchestra’s brilliance and versatility as well as Ormandy’s unflappable consistency and habitually underestimated interpretative gifts”.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the release of Kathleen Ferrier in New York, historic performances of Mahler and Bach by the much-loved contralto during her triumphant visits to the United States in 1948 and 1950. Recorded live on Ferriers only appearances in Carnegie Hall in January 1948, four months after her acclaimed performance at the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival, Mahlers Das Lied von der Erde reunited her with the conductor Bruno Walter and saw her making first appearances with tenor Set Svanholm and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Re-mastered by Norman White and Adrian Tuddenham, this remarkable account pre-dates Ferriers often-reissued 1952 recording by four years and finds her in exhilarating fresh voice a vivid, vital display of a great artist at her peak.

In November 2021, even before taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle began a cycle of Mahler symphonies with a performance of the Ninth (BR-KLASSIK 900205). The Sixth followed in September 2023 (BR-KLASSIK 900217) and the conductor is now tackling the composer’s Seventh Symphony.

In an effort to arrange the first performance of his Seventh Symphony, Gustav Mahler declared it to be his best work, preponderantly cheerful in character. His younger colleague Schoenberg expressed his admiration for the work, and Webern considered it his favorite Mahler symphony. Nevertheless, it remains the least performed and least written-about symphony of the entire cycle, and has come to be regarded as enigmatic and less successful than its siblings.

Controversy has surrounded Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in A minor, "Tragic," ever since he reversed the order of the inner movements, from what he originally published as Scherzo/Andante, to Andante/Scherzo, which became his actual practice. Whether one favors the former or the latter ordering may be a moot point, with a century of recordings of both versions indicating the general acceptance by audiences in either form. Paavo Järvi and the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo use the originally published sequence, also adopted by the 1963 critical edition, and deliver the symphony with high energy and force, reflecting the driven march of the opening Allegro energico.

Magdalena Kozená's silken mezzo delivers definitive interpretations of this luscious and enchanting orchestral-song repertoire. Magdalena Kozená, Sir Simon Rattle, and the Berliner Philharmoniker seduce in Ravel's Shéhérazade, stir and awe in Dvořák's austere Biblische Lieder, and render to the fullest the bittersweet potency of Mahler's intricately orchestrated Rückert Lieder. Recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie, these performances excite with the intense musical understanding shared by this husband and wife musical dream team. This release is destined to rival the popularity of Kozená and Rattle's enthralling Mozart collaboration. This is the first in a new series of recording projects reviving the legendary partnership between DG and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Born in Tallinn in 1962, Paavo Järvi is renowned for his dynamic interpretations and innovative programming. He has held prominent positions with leading orchestras, including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, or the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich more recently. Paavo Järvi's approach combines technical precision with expressive depth, making him a favourite among musicians and audiences alike.