Sir Georg Solti - Europe: The Orchestral Recordings [45CD+2DVD]

DECCA CLASSICS

£153

Format: 45CD+2DVD
Catalogue No.: 4853058
Barcode: 28948530588
Release Date: 06 Oct 2023
Genre: Classical

• 45 CDs + 2 DVDs from his very first recording on Decca (as a pianist in 1947) to his last studio album made three months before his death (which were his very first recordings made in his native Hungary with Hungarian musicians)
• Highlights include:
o Solti’s first recordings on Decca as a pianist accompanying violinist Georg Kulenkampff – Brahms’s Violin Sonatas, Mozart Violin Sonata in B-flat major, K.454 & Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata
o Beguiling accounts of Tchaikovsky’s Second and Fifth Symphonies with the Orchestre de Paris
o 3 recordings with the Berliner Philharmoniker including a dashing live account of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis
o Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1961 and a thrilling Rite of Spring and Shostakovich’s First Symphony caught live in performance made 30 years later
o Countless benchmark recordings made in the Sofiensaal in Vienna including the 1967 recording of Verdi’s Requiem which was producer John Culshaw’s last Decca recording. The recorded sound has scarcely been bettered since
o The potent demonstration disc of orchestral excerpts from The Ring, in glorious Decca digital sound, Solti’s last orchestral recording made at the Sofiensaal
o Mozart Piano Quartets K478 & K493 with members of the Melos Ensemble
o The 1995 UN 50th Anniversary Concert with Solti’s World Orchestra for Peace, on CD & DVD
o Mozart Requiem recorded live in Vienna’s Stephansdsom on the 200th Anniversary of the composer birth
o Solti’s last live recording with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. In what proved to be one of the last concerts before his death, Solti presided over an interpretation that tempers immense power with yearning introspection
• Includes a bonus audio documentary produced by Jon Tolansky with contributions from Angela Gheorghiu, Kiri Te Kanawa, Clemens Hellsberg (former violinist and Chairman of the Wiener Philharmoniker), Dr Michael Haas (former Decca Producer) and Charles Kaye (Director and General Manager of the World Orchestra for Peace), amongst others
• The recordings are accompanied by a 80pp book (En/Fr/De) with new notes by Andrew Stewart