Nelson Freire was among the most admired pianists of his generation, having played with the leading orchestras and conductors in the most prestigious recital halls, and in collaboration with the finest violinists, cellists, and fellow pianists. He also recorded extensively in a wide range of repertoire for numerous major labels, including Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, and Decca. On the latter, Freire issued an album of encores in 2019. Freire was born in Boa Esperança, Brazil, on October 8, 1944. He was amazingly precocious, taking his first piano lessons from his older sister at age three and giving his first public recital, where he played Mozart's A major Sonata, K. 331, at five. Among his earliest important piano teachers were Nise Obino and Lucia Branco. At the age of 12, he won the prestigious Rio de Janeiro International Piano Competition (1957). There, he performed, among other challenging pieces, the Beethoven Concerto No. 5 (the "Emperor") before a jury consisting of Lili Kraus, Marguerite Long, Guiomar Novaes, and other prominent pianists.

This collection commemorates the long-standing cooperation between conductor Gary Bertini, who was born in today’s Moldova, and the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, which began in 1978 with Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Their final recording featured also on this box set was the 1996 performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor in Tokyo. Bertini conducted several Israeli orchestras for many years before subsequently moving to Germany and Japan (the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra). During his lifetime he did not always earn the respect he deserved because he did not play the part of the glamourous conductor that was the accepted stereotype. But as time went by his aim to be faithful to the composer’s intentions became widely appreciated.

Sir Roger Norrington has been chief conductor of the former Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (today the SWR Symphonieorchester) for thirteen years. During this time he has caused a stir internationally with what has come to be termed ‘The Stuttgart Sound’: a synthesis of historically-informed performance practice with the technical capabilities of a modern orchestra. Whether in Mozart, Haydn, Bruckner or Brahms, Norrington has sought to capture the performance experience of the time, adjusting the orchestra’s size and seating plan to create an authentic sound without vibrato. His artistic credo was to keep as close as possible to the composer’s expectations. The present re-issue brings together in a boxed set three of most the important works of Sacred Music from the 19th century: Berlioz' Requiem, Brahms' A German Requiem and Beethoven's Missa solemnis."

Hans Rosbaud was a passionate musician, whose conscientiousness, intuition and experience were extended to even the most complex and contemporary musical forms. The diversity of the works presented here demonstrate his musical universality, and serve to further contradict the reputation he garnered during his lifetime as being only a technically superior champion of the avant-garde.With the exception of two pieces by Debussy composed in the 1890s, this present anthology of French orchestral repertoire comprises compositions from the 20th century, featuring Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye, Ibert’s Le Chevalier errant and Messiaen’s Chronochromie alongside works by French-Swiss composer Honegger, member of the legendary Groupe des Six, and Bucharest-born Mihalovici, who, like Honegger, studied composition under the traditionalist Vincent d’Indy.

"Stéphane Denève, triple winner of the Diapason d’Or of the Year, produced many outstanding recordings as chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra from 2011 until 2016 when the orchestra merged with its sister ensemble from Baden-Baden and Freiburg to form the SWR Symphony Orchestra. Among them, Ravel’s complete orchestral works. These are now reissued as a 5CD boxed set including the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel’s longest work, written for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the operas L’Heure espagnole and L’Enfant et les sortileges. Although the two operas cannot be strictly considered orchestral works, they are essential to understanding the oeuvre of a composer who had a great predilection for fantasy worlds and the exotic. As a student Ravel composed the Ouverture de Shéhérazade and, several years later, three poems for voice and orchestra on the same topic – both works form part of this set.

During his thirteen years as chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra of SWR Sir Roger Norrington conducted and recorded an important part of Berlioz's core repertoire.The present boxed set brings together the Requiem, the opera Benvenuto Cellini (in a concert performance), the oratorio L'Enfance du Christ, the overture Les Francs-juges and of course the Symphonie fantastique. Norrington's style has caused a stir internationally with what has come to be termed "The Stuttgart Sound": a synthesis of historically-informed performance practice with the technical capabilities of a modern orchestra. Whether in Mozart, Haydn, Bruckner or Berlioz, Norrington seeks to capture the performance experience of the time, adjusting the orchestra’s size and seating plan to create an authentic sound without vibrato.Hector Berlioz had to surmount a variety of challenges before he was able to pursue his musical vocation. His father, a respected physician in the provincial South of France, was not readily willing to come to terms with his son's intention to quit his medical studies and turn instead to music. He therefore made all further financial support subject to Hector's climbing up the musical ladder at lightning speed. Alas, it didn't work so easily. Berlioz's road to success was tedious and marked by adversity and struggle, his personal life tumultuous. The uniqueness and originality of his musical style are no longer disputed, but this insight came at the end of a decades long process.

Gunter Teuffel is the principal violist of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and a professor at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule. He has recorded the viola d’amore concertos of Carl Stamitz and Leos Janacek’s “Intimate Letters” in the original version with the viola d’amore, for which he was awarded the prize of the German Record Critics. Recently he recorded a new CD of “Hindemith’s Works for Viola d’Amore” with Hindemith’s own instrument.Gunter Teuffel studied with Enrique Santiago, the Melos Quartet, Sandor Végh, and with William Primrose. In 2012, he published his translation of David Dalton’s “The Art of Viola Playing, Conversations with William Primrose,” which is considered the single most comprehensive “bible” for the viola.

Among the works of Robert Schumann, the four symphonies represent the highs and lows of the composer’s life unlike any others. They were composed between 1840 (shortly after his marriage to Clara Schumann) and 1853 (at which point his mental health problems were becoming clearly apparent). They were, at least, where the first symphony is concerned, a leap into the unknown for the young composer who until then had focused on piano and Lied repertoire. In the coming years, Schumann’s life was a series of short, carefree episodes that alternated with considerably longer period marked by pressing worries – recognition often gave way to criticism and rejection. These were the composer’s personal circumstances when writing the four symphonies.The approach of Roger Norrington, whose artistic credo is the faithful rendition of a composer's intentions, becomes all the more important when considering Schumann’s background as well as the epoch in which he lived and worked. During Norrington’s thirteen years as chief conductor of the former Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (which merged with its sister orchestra from Baden-Baden to form the SWR Symphonieorchester in 2016), he adhered to historically informed performance practice, applying the characteristics of period style to the modern symphony orchestra.

Ida Haendel (1928-2020) was one of the violin legends of the 20th century, a true individual whose seven-decade performing career reached back to the golden age of violin playing. This collection brings together concertos by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Dvorák, Khachaturian and Bartók, all of which Haendel played during the years leading up to 1967 under the baton of Hans Müller-Kray and the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart. These recordings are among the most valuable treasures in today’s SWR archive.

Sir Roger Norrington was chief conductor of the former Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (today the SWR Symphonieorchester) for thirteen years. During that time he caused an international stir with what came to be known as ‘The Stuttgart Sound’, a synthesis of historically-informed performance practice with the technical capabilities of a modern orchestra. Whether in Mozart, Haydn, Bruckner or Brahms, Norrington sought to capture the performance experience of the time, adjusting the orchestra’s size and seating plan to create an authentic sound without vibrato. In these reissued recordings of Bruckner symphonies, Norrington and the SWR present the human face of a composer whose image in the public mind has sometimes been reduced to that of someone in a quasi-religious retreat. Bruckner’s symphonies, however, were distinctly secular works written with the Musikverein Vienna in mind. They describe journeys, nature and birdsong; there is dance music, humour, unexpected drama and pauses. In his entirely individual style, albeit with subtle influences of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Wagner, Bruckner conjures memories of his youth, from playing violin at village weddings to the sounds of the St Florian organ loft.

Gulda, a brilliant master of rhythm, uncompromising Bach interpreter and jazz musician, is in the best keeping with Chopin. Works by Chopin appear in Gulda’s concert programmes from quite early on. His secret in playing Chopin with so much vitality? It is the inimitable mix of rhythmic strictness, most cantabile tenderness and controlled outbursts of emotion. Although he would become one of 20th-century music’s most capricious rebels - as in love with the free spirits of jazz as with the living monuments of classical - pianist Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) was born and bred in that most traditional of musical cities, Vienna. He studied theory with the late-Romanticist Joseph Marx at the Vienna Academy of Music, and he won the Geneva International Pianists' Competition at age sixteen, eventually earning a reputation for the rare blend of cogency and freedom within his interpretations of music from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Ravel and Debussy. His most notable recordings included both books of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and the complete sonatas and concertos of Beethoven (in 1954 and 1966).

While composers like Schumann and Brahms held fast to the classical concept of the symphony, it was composers of the New German School, such as Wagner and Liszt, who preferred the tone poem as a modern means of expression for orchestral music. It tries to convey non-musical topics, like legends, tales, myths, and sometimes novels, in musical terms: programme music in its best sense. Strauss’ boisterous self-confidence allowed him the conviction that a different ‘formula’ would enable him to roll out his musical imagination with inimitable style. His success in doing so has ensured the popularity of these works to the present day.

The music journalist Peter Cossé said about 14-year-old shooting star Robert Neumann: “His interpretations prove without a doubt that he is an exceptional talent, and more than that: a precociously gifted musician in the best sense.”
As winner and award-winner of numerous national and international competitions Robert Neumann (born in 2001) was awarded the International Classical Music Discovery Award 2017. In 2018 the jury of the editorial department music of the broadcasting corporation Südwestrundfunk chose him to be the “SWR2 New Talent”. For three years he is being promoted by the SWR – with concerts, studio productions and a strong media presence that intends to show his versatility: as a pianist, composer and passionate improviser.