Red Line series

The name Verdi is synonymous with Italian opera. No other composer embodies all the fascination and passion of Italian music drama like Verdi. The special magic of his music comes out especially vividly when it's performed by the very greatest of vocal stars: Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Montserrat Caballé and Mirella Freni.

Together with the Requiem, Mozart's C minor mass is one of the brilliant composer's great unfinished sacred works. The work combines monumental power, solemn spirituality and moving solo passages. This recording under the baton of Baroque and Classical expert Raymond Leppard has great expressive depth, and offers a truly legendary vocal ensemble featuring stars like Kiri Te Kanawa and Ileana Cotrubas.

Roger Norrington was the first conductor to rediscover the original sound of the Romantic era. His recordings of famous overtures from Schubert to Wagner showed how fresh, indeed revolutionary an orchestra sounded in the early 19th century. Thanks to his careful studies of the instruments and performing practice of the time, Norrington brings out the poetry of the music in an unprecedented way, making his readings into true milestones of interpretation.

He was a dandy – but also highly religious. He lived in the era of atonality, but his unmistakably personal music is firmly rooted in the French tradition. And since it first saw the light of day, it has been popular with music-lovers and critics alike. Francis Poulenc composes original, sensuous-sounding and sometimes cheeky, whimsical works in all musical genres. His sacred works contain great depth of personal expression, and Richard Hickox's 1980 recording of the Stabat Mater and the Gloria enjoys reference status to this day.

Sir Neville Marriner is one of the most versatile conductors of our time. Alongside his recordings of Baroque and Classical repertoire, he has also made a name for himself as an interpreter of Romantic orchestral music, as this compilation shows: it contains popular works from the highly colourful French and Russian repertoire, including new discoveries like Tchaikovsky's Barcarole, which can certainly hold a candle to the famous work of the same name by Offenbach, and the Berceuse by opera composer Benjamin Godard.

The fascination that Johann Sebastian Bach held for subsequent generations of composers is evident in the many arrangements of his works for piano: those by Liszt, Busoni and others are profound interpretations by admirers of the Baroque master. For a long time, this remarkable repertoire was overshadowed by the originals, and we owe it to Alexis Weissenberg and Bruno-Leonardo Gelber that it now enjoys worldwide recognition.

When Rudolf Kempe was principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic back in the 1970's, the culmination of his long career was the recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies – an edition marked by maturity and the highest artistic standards. These recordings are one of the highlights of the Red Line series, and with this CD featuring Symphonies nos. 2 & 4 the entire set has now been reissued.