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Founded in Vienna in 1933, the Hugo Wolf Quartett today regularly perform s in the world’s most renowned concert hall venues and chamber music festivals. This disc shows them performing the Complete Works for String Quartet.

Robin Ticciati cements his reputation as an outstanding Berliozian with his latest recording, ‘Berlioz: Les nuits d’été’, which includes excerpts from Roméo & Juliette and La Mort de Cléopâtre.

A pupil of Sir Simon Rattle and the great Berliozian Sir Colin Davis, Robin’s reputation as one of this generation's best conductors was assured when he was announced as the next music director of Glyndebourne, taking over from Vladimir Jurowski in 2014.

Named one of the top ten young ‘conductors on the verge of greatness' by Gramophone Magazine, Robin delivers fresh insights and vivid colours into this luminous work.

The recording features Kathleen Ferrier prize-winning mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, who has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, New York and won acclaim as Cleopatra, a role she reprises here: ‘...the core of this stunning concert was a shattering, heart-rending performance by Cargill in awesome voice.’ (The Herald)

The works of Berlioz have featured prominently in Ticciati’s programmes with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra since he became their principal conductor in 2009.

Ticciati’s recording debut, ‘Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique’, received rave reviews: it was named Critics' Choice 'Sound of 2012' (The Independent), 'Classical CD of the Week' (The Sunday Times), 'Disc of the Week' (BBC Radio 3 'CD Review') and No. 3 in The Sunday Times’ Best Classical Albums of 2012 list.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra is internationally recognised as one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world with a multi award-winning catalogue of recordings under Robin Ticciati, Sir Charles Mackerras, Alexander Janiczek and Joseph Swensen.

Between February 1966 and January 1969 he made a series of 9 LP recordings for Decca. This small legacy already gives a clear indication of Abbado’s musical sympathies and the range of repertory he was conducting in the concert hall and on record, and which would continue to characterize his future career. This set brings together Abbado’s complete Decca studio recordings for the first time.

For much of his life, Otto Klemperer carried a note written by his hero Gustav Mahler, in which the composer praised the young Klemperer as ‘an outstanding musician […] predestined for the career of a conductor.’ Klemperer’s interpretations of Mahler’s work, famous for their ‘big outlines’ and ‘rock-like rhythms’ (Musical Times) became world-famous. This collection showcases Klemperer’s Mahler, including works such as the Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde.

Otto Klemperer was born on 14th May 1885 in Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland) and died on 6th July 1973 in Zurich hence 2013 marks 40 years since his passing. He had had a remarkable career as a young man but it was at the age of 70 that he started a series of recordings that would not only establish him as an internationally renowned conductor but provide EMI with a catalogue of recordings that became and remain touchstones.

Gustav Mahler’s influence on his successors was enormous and numerous composers – Zemlinsky, Schönberg, Berg, Webern, Shostakovitch, Britten and Copland are just a few to acknowledge their debt. His influence also spread to the world of popular music. Paul McCartney wrote “I have always adored Mahler, and Mahler was a major influence on the music of The Beatles. John and me used to sit and do the Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhorn for hours, we’d take turns singing and playing the piano. We thought Mahler was great.”

His income came principally from conducting of which he was a fine exponent; Otto Klemperer regarded him as his the best he ever saw and although eternally grateful that he recorded the works contained in this collection it is sad that he never committed so many more to disc. Whilst all of them demand attention it is those of the “Resurrection” Symphony (No. 2), Symphony No. 9 and Das Lied von der Erde in particular that have always been regarded as of the highest rank and in their latest remasterings literally defy their age.

Cries of ‘Vive Kl’empereur’ rang out in the Kroll Opera House after Klemperer’s first appointment as its director, conducting a concert of Bach and Mozart. This collection provides a wealth of the celebrated conductor’s Baroque and Classical repertoire, showcasing – at the forefront of the selection – Klemperer’s characteristically ‘unadorned’ Bach as well as his fiery interpretations of Haydn’s late symphonies. The set also includes Rameau’s Gavotte with Six Variations, Handel’s A minor Concerto Grosso and Gluck’s Overture to Iphigénie en Auilde.

Otto Klemperer was born on 14th May 1885 in Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland) and died on 6th July 1973 in Zurich, hence 2013 marks 40 years since his passing. He had had a remarkable career as a young man but it was at the age of 70 that he started a series of recordings that would not only establish him as an internationally renowned conductor but provide EMI with a catalogue of recordings that became and remain touchstones.

This collection contains the solo orchestral recordings that Klemperer undertook of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He recorded the Bach Orchestral Suites twice, the first in 1954, these appear on CD for the first time, and in 1969 whilst the recording of the Brandenburg Concertos date from 1960. Of Handel, he recorded No, 4 of the set of six Concerti Grossi Op. 6 in 1956.

The Classical period is represented in this collection by Franz Josef Haydn. In all Klemperer recorded 8 of his symphonies – 6 from the set written for Salomon’s London concerts, the once-called “Oxford”, supposedly written for the time he received an honorary degree from its university and the delightful No. 88. These recordings were made over the period from 1960 to 1971.

The works by the other two composers contained in this box are arrangements. Gluck composed his opera Iphigenia in Aulis in 1774 inspired by Euripedes’s last play written between 408 and 406BC, the year of his death. Richard Wagner made his arrangement at the end of 1846/beginning of 1847 in Dresden and it was this that Klemperer heard when Gustav Mahler conducted it in 1907 just a few weeks short of his 22nd birthday and this would serve as an inspiration for his entire career.

The work by Rameau was transcribed by Klemperer himself in 1967 and is a Gavotte in A minor with six doubles – or variations – taken from his Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin (c.1728). It was first performed with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in June 1968.

His enthusiasm for the art of his own time, and his desire to make a personal contribution to it, are not the least of Otto Klemperer’s qualities which have been overshadowed by the enduring image of a stern standard-bearer for tradition. Here are sprightly, quirkily personal performances of neo-classical masterpieces by Hindemith and Stravinsky, as well as a glimpse into the mind of Klemperer the creative musician, decisively influenced by his early encounters with Mahler.

Otto Klemperer was born on 14th May 1885 in Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland) and died on 6th July 1973 in Zurich, hence 2013 marks 40 years since his passing. He had had a remarkable career as a young man but it was at the age of 70 that he started a series of recordings that would not only establish him as an inter-nationally renowned conductor but provide EMI with a catalogue of recordings that became and remain touchstones.

At the age of 42 Klemperer became director of the Kroll Opera in Berlin and was responsible for numerous premieres of the music by modern composers, especially Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill. It was a source of pride that he brought so many works by Stravinsky, born three years and dying two years before him, to the public and this continued even when Stravinsky and Klemperer were in America where the Symphony in Three Movements was written. Hindemith, too, was supported both in Berlin and America.

Klemperer was so captivated by the Berthold Brecht/Kurt Weill Die Dreigroschenoper when it opened in Berlin in 1928 that he commissioned the 28-year-old composer to make a suite for wind instruments based on the original score. The result was the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, which was played for the first time at the annual Berlin opera ball under Klemperer’s direction.

Not only a conductor, Klemperer loved to compose and three works were recorded, The first, in October 1961, was Merry Waltz taken from his opera Das Ziel (The Goal) and re-orchestrated for a larger orchestra which had originally premiered in August 1936 in Los Angeles. The second is his Symphony No. 2 which had had a private recording earlier in 1969 but which EMI then decided deserved proper session time and was released to celebrate his 85th birthday. His String Quartet No. 7 was recorded in February 1970, with the Philharmonia String Quartet for the same reason.

The box set includes a musical bonus in the Overture and Dream Pantomime from Hänsel und Gretel composed by Engelbert Humperdinck. He had often conducted the opera and in 1932 his wife, the soprano Johanna Geissler, had alternated the roles of Gretel and the Witch.

The set concludes with Jon Tolansky’s Sound Biography which illustrates how Otto Klemperer inspired musicians and music lovers not only with his conducting but also with his extraordinary courage, surviving extreme physical and mental adversity with remarkable stoicism. This special disc also includes two never before released items that were discovered as this feature was being prepared: a speech by Dr Klemperer at a reception for his 75th birthday, and a rehearsal during his recording sessions for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. An entire hour of rehearsal can be heard on a bonus CD that appears with EMI Classics’ reissue of the complete opera.

Arthur Rubinstein Chopin recordings of the Nocturnes, from 1936–7, and the long series of Mazurkas, set down in 1938–9, show a balance, almost unique, between spontaneous feeling and the mature consideration which these readings embody. Rubinstein’s communicative fire is always apparent, reflected in the rich, always personal tone he produces in the Mazurkas, capable of a vast diversity of nuance.