Divin poeme starts off with an immediate advantage over the others listed above: it has the obvious and perfect coupling.

Wilhelm Backhaus (1884-1969) was internationally recognized and celebrated as an outstanding authority for classical-romantic piano music. Just how well deserved this admiration is, can especially be heard in the Beethoven-concerts and the Diabelli-variations, which are included in this 10-CD-Box and regarded as "trend setting" by critics until today. Early on, Backhaus had become a German pianist of world renown. As a sixteen-year-old he gave his first concert in London

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.

Carl August Nielsen (Danish: ; 9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931) was a Danish musician, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's greatest composer. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age. He initially played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886. He premiered his Op. 1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, at the age of 23. The following year, Nielsen began a 16-year stint as a second violinist in the prestigious Royal Danish Orchestra under the conductor Johan Svendsen, during which he played in 's Falstaff and Otello at their Danish premieres. In 1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Academy and continued to work there until his death.

This set restores to circulation Bruno Walter's New York Philharmonic versions of the mature Mozart symphonies (35-41). These were recorded in decent mono during the early LP era (1953-1956). Listeners familiar with his stereo versions of these works with the Columbia Symphony (an ad hoc ensemble formed largely for the sake of Walter's Indian Summer recording projects) will note some marked interpretative differences in the earlier recordings. The NYPO provides leaner textures and more alert playing, and Walter's conducting conveys greater vitality, than in the plusher and sometimes too languid Columbia Symphony recordings.

Toscanini conducted the music of Bruckner on five separate occasions. In December of 1896 in Turin, Toscanini led the Adagio of the Seventh Symphony in commemoration of Bruckner’s passing. In March of 1931, Toscanini conducted the NY Phil in a series of concerts featuring the complete Bruckner 7. Toscanini and the NY Phil performed the Bruckner 4 in November, 1932, and February, 1934 (in a 1932 response to a questionnaire from the Berliner Börsen Zeitung, Toscanini revealed: “In recent years I have thoroughly studied Bruckner’s monumental symphonies”). January 1935 concerts included the Bruckner 7. The January 27, 1935 NY Phil performance of the Bruckner 7 is the only recording of Toscanini conducting music by the great Austrian composer.

Les danses hongroises n°5 et 6 de Brahms (respectivement captées en 1967 et 1966) mettent d'entrée de jeu l'auditeur au parfum : c'est à une démonstration de dynamisme et de lyrisme que le grand chef américain nous convie. Ces danses de Brahms se hissent parmi les meilleures, et ne font poindre qu'un seul regret : qu'il n'y en ait que deux !
Les Préludes de Liszt (1963) nous rappellent alors quelles formidables affinités Bernstein trouvait dans l'univers lisztien (il faut connaitre absolument sa fantastique Faust-Symphonie ).

2 CDs mit Leonard Bernsteins herausragenden Interpretationen der Haydn-Sinfonien mit dem New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Als erster US-Amerikaner war Leonard Bernstein von 1958-1969 Musikdirektor des New York Philhamonic Orchestra. In seinem Wirken als Dirigent fand er weltweit große Beachtung mit einem Repertoire, das von der Klassik bis zur Avantgarde reichte.

Copland describes the material for Inscape as coming from two different series of twelve tones that in turn give rise to subsidiary serial patterns. He felt that serialism "freshened his harmonic palette," although this one-movement piece is more tonal than is customary in serial composition. While Copland never attached a great deal of significance to titles, he admitted to being drawn to a literary source for Inscape, the title of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Following the less than enthusiastic reception of his only full length opera, Copland arranged an orchestral suite from the score. It includes the love duet, the lively square dance, and the stirring and beautiful The Promise of Living drawn from the quintet at the end of the opera's first act. The composer was gratified when the Suite garnered the good reviews he had hoped the opera would inspire. In 1996, Murry Sidlin created a new suite for soprano, tenor and chamber ensemble based on his successful reduced orchestration of the opera, which uses the same scoring as the 13 instrument version of Appalachian Spring.

This version of Handel's 'Messiah' could quite possibly be feasible today only as a Bernstein reissue. The quest for authenticity has overtaken the performance and recording of early music, and even a conductor recording 'Messiah' without attempting a historically-informed style of performance wouldn't dare introduce the level of revision that Bernstein did for this 1956 recording and the Carnegie Hall performances which preceded it.

TDavid Oistrakh was one of those violinists beloved by people who don't especially like violinists. Don't get me wrong, plenty of violin aficionados love him too. But the fact that he played with such warmth of tone and musicality, never indulging in the screeching cat-music stuff that some violinists think sounds flashy, makes him uniquely listenable to folks not into violin playing for its own sake. Perhaps the fact that he was also a distinguished conductor had something to do with it, for he always seems to know where he is–how everything fits together. His performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto is a case in point: soulful, exciting, never ragged or overblown. Add Emil Gilels' epic rendering of the Piano Concerto and how can you refuse?

Leonard Bernstein was not a specialist in Baroque music, but he approached the composer's famous "Messiah" during his performing career, among other works. With the New York Philharmonic, in December 1956 Bernstein led his own, abridged version of Messiah with movements reordered into two parts rather than three. Later as music director he led "The Passion according to St.John", the "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day", and various solo concertos and concerti grossi. Several of these performances recognized the bicentennial of Handel's death in 1959. Bernstein recorded his version of "Messiah" in late 1956 and the "Ode for St.Secilia's Day following those performances with the NYP.