This new, excitingly original production of Mozart's most popular opera was the sensation of the 2006 Salzburg Festival. "What young director Claus Guth has made of Figaro - with Harnoncourt's active collaboration - is genius … The stellar cast performed with power and precision …" (Le Monde). "…a fully rounded musical performance…By and large the opera could hardly be more strongly cast. Anna Netrebko is a dreamy, vulnerable and beautifully sung Susanna, and Ildebrando D'Arcangelo's smouldering Figaro is a really macho rival to the Count.” (Gramophone)

This DVD is a new production of the Puccini favourite, staged at Salzburg 2012.Tenor Piotr Beczala rocks as Rodolfo, Mimì’s lover. Massimo Cavalletti sings Rodolfo’s friend Marcello with uncommon finesse and beauty of tone. Nino Machaidze is a moving Musetta.The robust orchestration of this popular opera verges on the ethereal as Mimì’s life slips away. Throughout his reading, conductor Daniele Gatti strikes the perfect balance between sentiment and sentimentality, vigour and fragility, the specter of untimely death and the quick and young it haunts. The New York Times wrote, “You don’t often hear Mimì sung with such vivid character and sheer charisma.”

Here is the opera event of 2005, the Salzburg Festival’s "La Traviata" featuring Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón, and Thomas Hampson in a dramatic staging by Willy Decker – the thrilling production that prompted riotous ovations not seen since Karajan’s heyday.

Dietrich Fischer Dieskau makes for an intriguingly offbeat, enjoyably seedy knight under Leonard Bernstein's baton. Bernstein has some interesting ideas about this opera, and not all of them work, but he grounds the opera with a solid, inspiring cast. Regina Resnik is clearly having a ball as Quickly, Rolando Panerai is fantastic in one of his most reliable roles. Only Juan Oncina and Graziella Sciutti, as the young lovers, disappoint. Best of all is Ilva Ligabue, caught in her prime in one of her best roles. Most of the cast would also feature in Bernstein's studio recording, but this live performance has a vitality absent from the more well-known studio effort.

Artists and audiences alike felt a deep sense of loss when the pandemic put a sudden end to live performances last year. The ability to enjoy digital concerts online was some consolation, but as nothing can quite match the magic of direct contact between performer and audience, the few live concerts that were able to go ahead during this period were particularly meaningful. Set for release on 3 December, Live from Salzburg documents two such remarkable events, featuring mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča’s appearances at the Salzburg Festival in the summers of 2020 and 2021 with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Christian Thielemann.

Leonard Bernstein conducts three of his own works: 'Divertimento', 'Serenade for Violin and Orchestra (after Plato's Symposium)' featuring violinist Gidon Kremer and 'Symphony no. 2 - The Age of Anxiety' featuring pianist Krystian Zimerman. The programme also includes 'Teachers and Teaching', a documentary in which Bernstein rehearses, reminisces about his mentors and interacts with pupils and colleagues.

Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms's orchestral works on film with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honour the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms's music. Here are four masterpieces: the two concert overtures, the brilliant "Haydn" Variations, and the delightfully Haydnesque A major Serenade.

Leonard Bernstein and the Wiener Philharmoniker perform Brahms orchestral works. Between 1981 and 1984 Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms's orchestral works with the Wiener Philharmoniker to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth in 1983. For the concertos, Bernstein enlisted the services of some of the finest Brahms interpreters of the time: the violoninst Gidon Kremer, the cellist Mischa Maisky and the pianist Krystian Zimerman.

"A straight, direct reading [of No.2], with glowing pastoral lyricism … The opening [of No.4] is simple and songful, yet there is plenty of vitality too, the third movement is rhythmically exhilarating and the great passacaglia has weight and momentum … there is real Brahmsian gravitas here" (Gramophone).

Here are Maurizio Pollini's compelling interpretations — paired with two now legendary conductors - of five piano masterworks performed with the Vienna Philharmonic at home, the Musikverein's magnificent "golden hall" In Mozart and Beethoven the camera captures the pianist's virtuosity as well as his empathy with Karl Bohm as they document the only two Mozart concertos that Pollini has ever released. For the Brahms concerto Pollini is joined by a young Claudio Abbado creating great music-making in which this essential repertoire is joyfully illuminated by two kindred spirits.

"Both Zimerman and Bernstein are involved and involving here … a rapt intensity [in the slow movement]" (Gramophone on No.1). "Bernstein and Zimerman have established a masterly understanding of the work, and their artistic symbiosis is inpressive" (Gramophone on No.2).

DG presents John Williams in Vienna, the live recordings of the Hollywood legend's Vienna Philharmonic 2020 debut. Saying it's "one of the greatest honors of my life," he received a standing ovation before a single note was played. Sharing the stage with the famous orchestra and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, he performs iconic themes from Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and other cinematic landmarks that have earned countless awards: 5 Oscars, 5 Emmys.

The Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2021, conducted by Daniel Harding with Igor Levit as soloist, was recorded again this year by Sony Classical. The Summer Night Concert, which took place on June 18, 2021, is an outdoor concert held annually since 2008, following the "Concert for Europe" held from 2004 to 2007. The baroque park of Schönbrunn Palace provides an enchanting backdrop for the concert. Among the illustrious conductors who have conducted the Vienna Philharmonic's Summer Night Concert in recent years are Georges Prêtre, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Möst, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Zubin Mehta, Semyon Bychkov and Gustavo Dudamel.

This is the most beautiful of Mozart playing, his last piano concerto given here by Emil Gilels with total clarity. This is a classic performance, memorably accompanied by the VPO and Böhm. Suffice it to say that Gilels sees everything and exaggerates nothing, that the performance has an Olympian authority and serenity, and that the Larghetto is one of the glories of the gramophone. He's joined by his daughter Elena in the Double Piano Concerto in E flat, and their physical relationship is mirrored in the quality, and the mutual understanding of the playing: both works receive marvellous interpretations. We think Emil plays first, Elena second, but could be quite wrong. The VPO under Karl Böhm is at its best; and so is the quality of recording, with a good stereo separation of the two solo parts, highly desirable in this work.