Die Wiener Philharmoniker sind häufig so etwas wie eine sichere Bank für R. Strauss - und für die Alpensymphonie allemal (man denke nur an die phantastische Aufnahme unter Thielemann). Und auch hier gelingt ihnen - unter dem sehr engagierten Dirigat von S. Ozawa eine herausragende Interpretation.

This DVD presents Seiji Ozawa conducting two great choral masterpieces, beloved by audiences around the world. Orff's Carmina Burana, boisterous and lyrical, sets medieval songs in a celebration of life's pleasures. Beethoven's monumental Ninth Symphony, concludes with the uplifting 'Ode to Joy', a timeless plea for universal brotherhood.

The Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert It has long been a Philharmonic New Year’s Day tradition to present a program consisting of the lively and at the same time nostalgic music from the vast repertoire of the Johann Strauss family and their contemporaries. These concerts not only delight the audience in the Wiener Musikverein, but also enjoy great international popularity through the worldwide television broadcasts, which now reach over 50 countries. The concert was conducted by Seiji Ozawa for the first time in 2002 and the light-hearted nature of the event finds this always engaging conductor at his most impishly playful.

45 years after his debut Philips recording of Beethoven’s 9th, Seiji Ozawa returns to this epic masterpiece. The Mito Chamber Orchestra features many international star players including Radek Baborák (horn), Ricardo Morales (clarinet) and Philippe Tondre (oboe). The German baritone Markus Eiche leads a quartet of leading Japanese soloists and the Tokyo Opera Singers in a fascinating performance on a chamber orchestra scale.

Seiji Ozawa is not only a world-famous Japanese conductor, but also a founder and director of the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto, home of the Saito Kinen Orchestra, which in 2015 was renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival (OMF). In this all-Beethoven program, Ozawa conducts the popular Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 2 & 7, performed with his fellow colleagues of the Saito Kinen Orchestra.

Ozawa's interpretation of The Planets is assuredly not in the Boult tradition, but brings a fresh approach to Holst's sole excursion into extravagance. Tempos are not those to which we are accustomed: ''Mars'' brings war at record speed and ''Mercury'' is more leisurely winged messenger than usual. Both ''Venus'' and ''Jupiter'' are presented more conventionally and are finely played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Ozawa misses some of the tenor of ''Saturn'', seeming to treat it more as an exercise in sonorities, but is exhilarating in ''Uranus'', where the timpanist has a field day.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the greatest media event in classical music, Sony Classical released in 2015 a complete edition of all the works ever played at the Wiener Philharmoniker’s New Year’s Concerts. Performed in the “Golden Hall” of the Musikverein between 1941 and 2015, the iconic live performances were issued for the first time in a single box set of 23 CDs. Now, in 2020, this edition will be available as a 26-CD extended version, with all the new repertoire from the last five years compiled on three additional CDs.

Sony Classical is excited to present the fantastic 1984 recording of Yo-Yo Ma, Seiji Ozawa, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a newly remastered re-release. This stellar line-up got together to record R. Strauss’ Don Quixote - indisputably the composer’s finest example of musical painting, his most daring in design and most controversial in effects - and Schoenberg’s fascinating arrangement of Monn’s Harpsichord Concerto for Cello and Orchestra.

Young piano sensation Yundi Li collaborates with Seiji Ozawa and the Berlin Philharmoniker to present two highly innovative and provocative keyboard works from the 20th-century– Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 and Ravel Piano Concerto in G major.

The output of the Finnish national composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) comprises one of the most fascinating treasure houses of classical music. It includes world favourites such as Valse triste and Finlandia, as well as the most recorded violin concerto of the 20th century. It includes a symphonic cycle that has become one of the most esteemed and popular cycles since Beethoven.

This is the seemingly unavoidable Sibelius/Tchaikovsky pairing, one that has launched many a young career. Itzhak Perlman recorded these very same pieces for his own debut album on RCA, and with this very orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf. That's a fine disc, but Perlman would later surpass those efforts in later recordings. Nor do I find Leinsdorf an ideal partner, with the comically booming percussion in the Sibelius perhaps the biggest audible gaffe. These current readings are much more satisfying overall. Mullova has not redone these pieces, nor is she prone to recording much at all, so these early efforts deserve credit for holding up so well.