Few musical partnerships have elicited such divergent critical opinions as Maurizio Pollini and Claudio Abbado in Brahms’s two piano concertos. Reviewing the First Concerto in April 1999, Richard Osborne found ‘a lack of quickness and intelligence in the inner-part playing’ while missing ‘any real sense of interaction between soloist and orchestra’. A year earlier Bryce Morrison, in his review of the Second Concerto, had found it ‘impossible to think of them apart, their unity [here] is so indissoluble’. BM also praised what he heard as ‘a granitic reading stripped of all surplus gesture, preening mannerism or overt display, intent only on the unveiling of a musical or moral truth’.

Best-known for his refined performances of Baroque and Classical music, Nikolaus Harnoncourt approaches modernism for the first time in this 2004 CD of Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; Divertimento for String Orchestra. Refinement is still Harnoncourt's watchword in Music, for his reading is extremely polished and precise, but so cautious as to make the work seem insipid. Missing are the edginess of the dissonant counterpoint in the opening movement, percussive bite in the second, agitation in the "night music" of the third, and gusto in the fourth, all necessary to any successful performance.

The works of the early Baroque Italian composers featured on this CD all make some kind of use of the new virtuoso violin technique. Thus they enable us to understand how, as a result of untold experiments, a technique that was specifically suited to the violin gradually began to emerge.

“Unquestionably one of the greatest pianists of all time” is how Gramophone magazine has described Martha Argerich. Her relationship with the label goes back to 1965 and her victory at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Over several decades it has produced a rich catalogue of live and studio recordings, embracing a repertoire that spans three centuries, a diversity of genres, and collaborations with such figures as Charles Dutoit, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky and Itzhak Perlman. The complete recordings for EMI Classics, Teldec, Erato and Warner Classics are featured in this box.

We continue our rediscovery of the groundbreaking and legendary series of recordings that Nikolaus Harnoncourt dedicated to Mozart’s symphonies with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the early 1980s. On the program: a breath-taking Symphony No. 40, along with Symphonies Nos. 25 and 29, now available in digital format for the first time.

Goldener Saal des Wiener Musikvereins, im Frühling 2014. Ein seltenes, ein einmaliges Zusammentreffen. Zwei sehr unterschiedliche Superstars de r Klassik entdecken neu die Klavierkonzerte Nr. 17 und 24 von Mozart: Weltstarpianist Lang Lang, Alte -Musik -Legende und Doyen der historischen Aufführungspraxis Nikolaus Harnoncourt gemeinsam mit – nicht zu vergessen – den Wiener Philharmonikern. Ein Ferns ehteam begleitete vier Tage lang die Vorbereitungen, die Proben, die Aufnahmesitzungen und die Diskussionen, kurz – den kompletten künstlerischen Schaffensprozess, an dessen Ende ein vielbejubeltes Bestselleralbum entstand.

Mozart's best-known opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) opened a series of new productions at the 2012 Salzburg Festival. Legendary maestro Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducted his orchestra, the Concentus Musicus Wien, performing the Salzburg Festival's first-ever presentation of Die Zauberflöte on period instruments.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

This amazing document, recorded at the Styriarte Festival in Graz, Austria in June and July, 2009, and conducted by the renowned Nikolaus Harnoncourt, reestablishes Gershwin’s masterpiece as the great American folk opera it was meant to be in the first place – the “American Wozzeck.” . With New Zealand star Jonathan Lemalu as Porgy, Isabelle Kabatu as Bess, and Gregg Baker – who sang the role at the Met in 1985 and at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1986 – as Crown, the performance emphasizes the work’s enormous theatrical and musical qualities, gives it the importance it always deserved, and sets it squarely alongside the greatest pieces ever created for the concert hall.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.