Rudolf Buchbinder / Zubin Mehta / Wiener Philharmoniker BRAHMS The Piano Concertos

This recording unites pianist Rudolf Buchbinder with his friend and conductor Zubin Mehta with whom he has built an intimate musical rapport. They are joined on this album by the Wiener Philharmoniker, an orchestra with which Buchbinder has appeared over many decades and enjoyed some of the greatest triumphs of his career.

Approaching his 70th birthday, Buchbinder once more revisits the concertos as a result of his increasing awareness of Brahms’ music.

“With Brahms, most people are struck only by the idea that his music is incredibly difficult and complex. But sometimes it requires a whole lifetime to become intimate with Brahms’ sound world and achieve the maturity that gives you a new freedom as a performer.” (Rudolf Buchbinder).

Pavarotti THE 50 GREATEST TRACKS

This album contains nearly 3 hours of music and includes all Pavarotti's opera hits - including Nessun Dorma, used as the 1990 World Cup theme tune and the track that made him a household name as well as all his famous popular songs: O sole mio, Caruso, Santa Lucia, Volare and many more.

In a thrilling first, the album also contains the first official release of the first known recording of his voice, the aria Che gelida manina recorded on his Italian professional debut in 1961.

Other highlights include great duet collaborations with superstar friends Frank Sinatra, Bono, Eric Clapton and Sting plus fellow tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras in the live Three Tenors version of Nessun Dorma.

For the first time all material is fully remastered at 24bit for the best sound ever.

Pavarotti The 50 Greatest Tracks - truly the definitive collection of the music of a great man and true legend.

Mischa Maisky / Berliner Philharmoniker / Zubin Mehta DVORÁK Cello Concerto RICHARD STRAUSS Don Quixote

These performances were recorded in front of an audience in Berlin's Philharmonie during December 2002. Maisky has dedicated this disc to his old mentor, Gregor Piatigorsky, who died thirty years earlier. Piatigorsky, of course, was a master in this repertoire, and his recordings of it endure even today. Maisky is a fine cellist, but it is less likely that these readings will stand the test of time the way that Piatigorsky's have.

It's not because Maisky lacks his mentor's technical ability. The problem is with the interpretations. Maisky is willful, much as Leonard Bernstein was when he conducted the Dvořák with Maisky back in the 1980s, but without Bernstein's electric personality. In spite of it all, there's a reticence to Maisky's playing that is out of character with this music. This reticence is emphasized by Mehta's conducting, which is correct, but thick and not very interesting. It's as if Mehta is trying to remove the last possibility that some listeners might find these works vulgarly exciting. (If only Mehta would reclaim the passion he had access to in the 1960s and 70s!) The coda to the Dvořák's opening movement, for example, doesn't get anyone's adrenaline flowing, and the opening minutes of the finale, usually so compelling, are even more stolid. (For what its worth, Maisky comments that he has removed some of the "distortions" that have become part of this work's tradition since the very first performance.)

Don Quixote is even more problematic. Mehta dusts off every single orchestral detail with care, but in terms of emotion, he and Maisky draw an almost complete blank. The cellist doesn't succeed in painting a multifaceted portrait of the knight. Shorn of its humanism, as it is here, Don Quixote is not much more than a series of noisy but cleverly orchestrated episodes. (Raymond Tuttle)