This is the biggest piece of music that ever gets performed with any regularity. Anyone who avoids Schönberg because his name is synonymous with that nasty, atonal stuff need have no fear. This is a ripely romantic score with big tunes and cinematic orchestration. The story is simple. King Waldemar of Gurre is fooling around with Tove. The queen finds out and has her poisoned. The king curses God, and is condemned to ride on a ghostly hunt throughout all eternity, until the arrival of dawn signals an end to the nightly horror. This performance–which happily has been reissued at bargain price–has been the choice since the day it was released, both for interpretation and for recording. Magnificent doesn't begin to describe it.

Seiji Ozawa’s appointment as music director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1970 was later vividly described by Barack Obama: “With his mop-top hairstyle, his turtleneck jumpers and his love beads, he almost looked like a Beatle”. This recording of Dvořák’s ‘From the New World’ Symphony from May 1975 was one of the last to be recorded by Philips in quadraphonic sound and has been remixed specifically for this reissue.

Gidon Kremer, instead of coupling the Shostakovich Second Concerto with its natural partner, No. 1, enterprisingly chooses a concerto which Shostakovich labelled as his own Op. 129, but which in fact confusingly enough is Schumann's Op. 129. This is a novelty on two counts. Not only does it bring us Shostakovich's orchestration of the work, aiming to improve on Schumann's own, but for the first time to my knowledge puts on disc Schumann's violin version of his cello concerto. Shostakovich's aim in renovating the orchestration with changes predominating in the tuttis was to improve the work for his protege, Rostropovich.

Tōru Takemitsu’s Quatrain and A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden exemplify his synthesis of Western avant-garde techniques and Japanese aesthetics. In Quatrain, scored for clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and orchestra, Takemitsu evokes the Japanese concept of ma—the space between things—through fluid shifts of timbre and atmosphere. He likened the work to an emaki, a picture scroll unfolding scene by scene, where each musical idea is independent yet interwoven.

Momo Kodama (whose acclaimed album, Point and Line, contrasted Toshio Hosakawa and Claude Debussy) presents the piano concerto which Hosakawa wrote for her, the shimmering "Lotus Under the Moonlight." Composed in 2006, "Lotus" is also an homage to Mozart, with distant echoes of his Concerto No.23 in A Major, the work with which it is paired here in a concert recording from Japan with Maestro Seiji Ozawa and his Mito Chamber Orchestra.

“Ozawa’s hell-for-leather élan comes as close to as criminally graphic a representation of ritual murder in music as you are likely to hear.” — MusicWeb International (on Seiji Ozawa’s recording of Le sacre de printemps with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 1968). The legendary Stravinsky recordings of Seiji Ozawa and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are brought back to life in this new pressing from RCA.

“Ozawa’s hell-for-leather élan comes as close to as criminally graphic a representation of ritual murder in music as you are likely to hear.” — MusicWeb International (on Seiji Ozawa’s recording of Le sacre de printemps with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 1968). The legendary Stravinsky recordings of Seiji Ozawa and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are brought back to life in this new pressing from RCA.

"My introduction to Messiaen’s Turangalīla-Symphonie came on a youthful visit to London, when I was persuaded that it would be more interesting for me than some other box set I was lingering over – I think one of the von Karajan Bruckners – at one of the discount record shops. This was the 1968 RCA recording with Seiji Ozawa, and like many a strong first impression of this work, it was the one which shook my world."

Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa originally wanted to be a pianist. But when he injured his hand during a rugby match, he turned to conducting and composing - with great success. As assistant to Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan, he had the best teachers, appeared on all the world's great stages and conducted the Vienna State Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others. This recording with the Orchestre de Paris features Tchaikovsky's Ballet Suites to The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty.

This Blu-ray sampler with carefully selected concerts accompanies Seiji Ozawa's impressive career over 3 decades. Seiji Ozawa was not only Japan’s best-known conductor but also the founder of the Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, which in 2015 was renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival. Special feature included in this edition from Matsumoto: on the occasion of Maestro Ozawa’s 80th birthday, Martha Argerich and Matthias Goerne joined the orchestra to perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, plus a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ - a deeply emotional moment for the Maestro!

This well recorded disc from 1985 delivers impressive readings of both of these works. Mullova takes a very individual view of these concertos and has the technical assurance to communicate her view with compelling certainty.
The Tchaikovsky concerto is played in the full uncut version that was written by the composer. This is now becoming more common but in 1985 was still unusual enough to warrant comment. By playing the notes as Tchaikovsky had intended Mullova signals a very serious intent which she carries out throughout these two concertos.

Seiji Ozawa had a fondness for more modern compositions; his efforts on this 1982 release showcase his versatility by recording one of the finest performances of The Four Seasons in history, and the standard by which many future recordings would come to be judged. With over 500,000 albums sold since its release, it’s no wonder that this recording would be chosen as one of the initial four vinyl releases by Craft Recordings. Pressed on 180-gram vinyl and pressed by Optimal in Germany.

Krystian Zimerman is getting better as he gets older. He used to be one of a half-dozen great young pianists, a brilliant virtuoso with tremendous expressivity, enormous soul, and a habit of making even fewer recordings than Argerich or Pollini. Over the years of ever-fewer recordings, he's grown into an astounding virtuoso and the emotional power of his interpretations have grown with his technique.