Some months ago, the daily Greek newspaper "To Vima" gave away a collection of 20 CDs, called "Dimitri Mitropoulos - Retrospective". It is a compilation of recordings that Mitropoulos did for Columbia (now Sony). I think some of them are not in the Sony catalogue at the moment. Here is the first box, discs 1-5. Included are: Mozart's Don Giovanni (disc 1-3), Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony and Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije Suite" & Piano Concerto no.3, with Mitropoulos as soloist and conductor.

This is my favorite Sutherland collection. It has so much from so many periods. The bits from The French Opera Gala are beyond belief. It is some of the best coloratura she ever did and was recorded at a great part of her career. Both the Wagner and the Mozart discs were recorded when she was close to 60, which doesn't mean that much with Sutherland. Still it would have been great to have heard the Wagner recorded a decade earlier when she recorded the Turandot. She would have been better at Wagner than anyone around today. Not Nilsson or Flagstad's equal, but better by far than Voigt, who isn't bad. On the Mozart bits, a couple sound old, but the rest are as good a performance of Mozart as you are ever going to hear. Many people only like the young Sutherland, but I like the color and richness her voice developed with age.

This is the second Warner box set that repackages Andras Schiff's 1995-99 solo recordings; like the companion "group" set Andras Schiff - Concertos and Chamber Works, it represents extremely good value, both in monetary and artistic terms.

Saul is one of Handel's largest oratorios; its rich orchestration includes trumpets, trombones, timpani, harp, and carillon. René Jacobs certainly wrests every drop of color from this luxurious array of instruments, particularly in the choruses, which are gloriously grand but also extremely exciting. In Nos. 20-24, where the populace (with maddening relentlessness) praises David above Saul to the incessant jangling of the carillon, it's easy to understand why the king objects to the unseemly revelry. Handel's music wonderfully suggests both the joyous celebration and seeds of jealousy being planted in Saul's mind. Similarly, Jacobs' careful choice of colors for the continuo part makes the famous "Dead March" far more solemn than it often sounds, an appropriate introduction to Handel's "Elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan".

The modern-instrument ensemble of the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra plays stylishly and with commitment… For anyone with an interest in the music of this time and place, especially as several of these pieces are here receiving their very first recordings. –MusicWeb International

Some critics claim that Karajan's 1965 recording of Sibelius' Symphony No. 5 with the Berlin Philharmonic is the greatest performance of that symphony ever recorded. Some claim that his 1967 recording of the Sixth is the greatest performance of that symphony ever recorded. And a few critics even assert that his 1965 Fourth is, if not the greatest ever recorded, at least the most beautiful ever recorded. Beautiful? Yes, certainly; all of Karajan's mid-'60s recordings of Sibelius, like all of his mid-'60s recordings of everything, were opulently, sumptuously, voluptuously beautiful.

Although known almost exclusively for his instrumental concertos and the spurious Adagio attributed to him, Tomaso Albinoni was mainly a man of the theater; he composed 81 operas and, late in life, made his living as a singing coach. However, the best efforts of posterity to catch up with Albinoni's operatic creations are significantly stymied by the fact that only three of his stage works are fully extant, the rest preserved only in occasional and fugitive fragments in the form of single arias and other bits and pieces. "Il Nascimento dell'Aurora" is a serenata – or more specifically, a "festa pastorale" – a kind of courtly entertainment not really meant to be specifically dramatic or compelling and, in this case, dealing with the birth of Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora ….

This is a very interesting and convenient set to own of Muzio Clementi's sonatas for piano and other instruments in contrast to his great sonatas for the piano alone!

Among the great instrumental composers who were active in Italy in the 18th century, Giuseppe Tartini (Pirano d’Istria, 1692 - Padova, 1770) is the one who most explicitly focussed his production on his own chosen instrument, the violin, neglecting genres that in his day were very popular. 135 violin concertos and about 200 sonatas for violin and basso continuo form, in fact, the main bulk of his output. The Arte dell’Arco ensemble, who have met with great success with this series, measure themselves once again with Tartini’s beautiful and difficult concertos, all works recorded here for the first time.

In the early sixties the clarinettist Dieter Klöcker founded the CONSORTIUM CLASSICUM - a German chambermusic ensemble - which not only cultivated the standard repertory, but also brought back to life rediscovered musical masterworks. The instrumentation of these works include wind instruments only as well as the combination of woodwinds and strings up to a nonette. The members of the Ensemble are all solists, professors from music academies and leaders from first class orchestras, who uphold the Ensemble´s concept in a very individual and consistent manner. International appearances in concerts, honorable awards and invitations to famous festivals - including the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Festival and the Berlin festival etc. - as well as numerous records, radio and TV productions, all go to confirm the extraordinary status of this unique ensemble.

Philips's repackaging of Gardiner's sophisticated Mozart symphonies offers all the usual qualities of period instruments: the immediacy of gut strings and reduced-vibrato articulation, rustic sounding woodwind, precariously exciting natural brass and the unmistakable 'thwack' of hard sticks on the timpani. Taken individually, the five discs are not, alas, of equal merit. David Wilkins

Vladimir Spivakov belonged to the same artistic tradition established by Leopold Auer, and even it might be said he was the true inheritor of the crown afetr Oistrakh and Kogan in which majestic tune, virile temperament and dazzling technique.