Claudio Abbado

In the year of his 80th birthday, Claudio Abbado and his superb orchestra continue their Mozart celebration with critically acclaimed solo concerto performances.

The third of a three album series of Mozart wind compositions puts Claudio Abbado’s inimitable, refined stamp on this music of vigour, grace and beauty. Guilhaume Santana’s bassoon – mournfully and boisterous by turn – exploits every interpretive possibility in Mozart’s earliest surviving wind concerto, the Bassoon Concerto , K. 191. The arcadian chase that is the Flute Concerto No. 2, K. 314 proves an exhilarating and easy conquest of perfection by flautist Jacques Zoon and clarinettist Alessandro Carbonare spins tonal majesty out of thin air in the reflective Concerto in A, K. 622.

The second movement of the clarinet concert is known for its use in famous movie " Out of Africa " (1985) by Sydney Pollack (starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep).

Orchestral showpieces such as those grouped here were among the most obvious beneficiaries of the advances in recording technique pioneered by Decca from the late 1950s onwards. Works which may have seemed dauntingly complex to an earlier generation of gramophone collectors could now be captured with startling clarity, due in no small part to the improved acoustic spread, and it was at this time that the great twentieth-century classics began to win a larger audience.

When the young Claudio Abbado came to make these recordings in London in the 1960s (he was 32 at the time of his very first Decca session on 11 February 1966 at which the recordings of Prokofiev’s Chout and Romeo and Juliet were begun), he had already begun to demonstrate his commitment to contemporary Italian music, and so it is perhaps not too surprising that he should have been contracted to record these classic works from the twentieth-century orchestral repertoire. This release is also interesting as an early document of Abbado’s relationship with the LSO in 1966, eventually becoming its principal conductor in 1979.

The sublime results were worth the wait: after forty years of collaboration, Maria João Pires and Maestro Claudio Abbado record two of Mozart’s most beloved piano concertos for the very first time.

Maria João Pires weaves dark, dramatic strains into the miraculous luminosity of the D minor Concerto No.20, K.466 with a simplicity that makes her Mozart supreme. She then bestows a glowing majesty upon Mozart’s last piano concerto, the serene Concerto No.27 K. 595 in B flat major, as only an artist of her gifts and profound experience can.

Orchestra Mozart and Maestro Abbado support Pires with translucent sound and immaculate style: an exceptional encounter between two musical giants of our time.

The best of Ravel, Ravel's greatest hits - they're all here on 2 CDs packed to the brim, containing all of Ravel's most memorable tunes.

Inevitably, the focus is on the immortal Bolero, beloved of the film industry. Ravel famously considered it to be his masterpiece, but claimed it had no music in it - an opinion with which many would take leave to disagree.

La Valse extends the theme of dance, the Rhapsodie espagnole the theme of Spanishry and exoticism, while the compilation ends with a flavour of jazz as exemplified in the Blues movement from the Violin Sonata and the Concerto for piano, left hand (which in the 1930s the famous pianist Alfred Cortot dared to play using both hands, incurring the composer's wrath).

In the 1960s and 70s Claudio Abbado made several recordings for Decca – orchestral works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bruckner, as well as 20th-century repertoire by Hindemith, Janácek and Prokofiev. This recording is part of that legacy and there are plenty of magical touches – real swagger in the finale of the Seventh Symphony, dashing humour in the finale of the Eighth, real nobility at the opening of the Creatures of Prometheus Overture. These were the only Beethoven recordings Abbado made for Decca and they are now collected on one CD. The Seventh and the Overture receive their first international release on CD.