Credits:

BERLIN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Description:

To kick off the 2015/16 season, the Berlin Philharmonic is releasing a Super Value Box Set of eight monumental masterpieces from its history with the great masters. With the exception of Karajan's rare 1957 live performance with Gould, the albums were recorded and released by Sony Classical and RCA between 1989 and 2002. This was the period when Karajan passed away and Abbado became the artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic, and the orchestra and its sound changed drastically (Abbado's tenure was from 1990 to 2002). The Berliner Philharmoniker underwent a transformation from the massive and sumptuous sonority of the best orchestra of the 20th century, honed under Karajan, to an ensemble with the flexibility to handle a more diverse and wide-ranging range of music. It was an important period for the new Berliner Philharmoniker of the Rattle era. These performances, selected from the Berliner Philharmoniker's repertoire, were performed by conductors such as Karajan, Abbado, Barenboim, Maazel, Vant, Ozawa, Jansons, and Mehta, all of whom have had close ties to the Berliner Philharmoniker, and were truly a diverse and memorable experience, with the world's finest orchestra maintaining their own strong personalities and adapting to each conductor's approach. The Berliner Philharmoniker is a treasure trove of great performances that allow the listener to easily appreciate the variety of musical styles that the world's finest orchestras have developed in response to each conductor's approach, while maintaining their own strong personalities.Each disc is enclosed in a paper jacket with the jacket design as it was when first released, and the eight paper jackets are housed in a clamshell box. Sony Music