Hector Berlioz, France’s greatest Romantic composer, exemplifies the spirit of his age – yet his genius was also ahead of its time. Reflecting his colourful life, his music is astonishing for its originality and ambition, and for orchestration of groundbreaking brilliance. This, the first-ever complete Berlioz edition, comprises carefully selected recordings and even includes works completely new to the catalogue. The accompanying booklet, lavishly illustrated, contains a fascinating commentary from Berlioz biographer David Cairns, whose words bring the composer’s music still more vividly to life.

Mahler famously stated, that “a symphony must be like a world; it must contain everything”. Guided by this saying the British conductor Daniel Harding and the Verbier Festival Orchestra, capture the colossal spectrum of emotions in Mahler’s last completed symphony (1908–1909). Their performance of the 9th Symphony has been recorded live at the 2017 Verbier Festival and will be released on February 2. The symphony’s rustic second movement is now available to listen to.

Leading Swedish composer Jesper Nordin’s soundscape lies at the crossroads of Swedish traditional music, rock and improvised music. On this recording, Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra perform Röster (‘voices’), a trilogy whose works are each based on different kinds of Swedish music which the composer sees as being part of his background. In Åkallan (‘Invocation’), Nordin has used the traditional vocal technique called kulning as his starting point. Extreme metal rock (through the band Meshuggah) provided the material for Ärr (‘Scar’) and the result is an explosive rhythmic scream that has seldom been heard in classical music. Finally, Öde (‘Fate’ or ‘Deserted’) incorporates recordings by the legendary Swedish opera singers Birgit Nilsson and Jussi Björling in an electronic part which interacts with the orchestra.

Following the critical success of Ray Chen's solo album, Virtuoso, for which he received the prestigious 2011 German Echo Klassik Award, his new album, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos, is the young violinist's first concerto recording on the Sony Classical label. This release combines the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn concertos, both of which have played a significant role in Ray's career so far. His superb performance of these works led to his triumph at two major violin competitions in 2008 he won the Yehudi Menuhin Competition performing the Mendelssohn Concerto, followed by the first prize in the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels a year later with the Tchaikovsky Concerto.

For this 2013 release from Ondine, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, conductor Daniel Harding, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra present three exciting works by Jörg Widmann, a German composer who possesses an impressive talent for orchestration. The Violin Concerto is the most imposing piece on the program, at nearly a half hour in duration and of an exceptionally wide range of techniques and sonorities, and it serves as a powerfully expressive vehicle for Tetzlaff. Long lines predominate, and the tonal inflections of the chromatic writing make it quite accessible to listeners who don't normally listen to contemporary works.

Seven musical character images – each one immensely sensual and expressive, and standing on its own like a monument. The British composer Gustav Holst, fascinated by (esoteric) astrology, chose the planets of our solar system and the characteristics attributed to them as the basis for what he referred to as musical ""mood pictures"" or ""embodiments"". Ultimately, the seven movements of his orchestral suite “The Planets”, op. 32, composed between 1914 and 1916, can also be understood as general explorations of human traits.

It takes a long time to find such a distinguished conductor who, in his early 20s, has already conducted orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic with great success. You will find what you are looking for in this class with the conductor Daniel Harding, who was born in 1975. After many great CD recordings, Harding's work can now be experienced in a fascinating DVD production: in the recording of Mozart's opera »Così fan tutte« at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2005 - staged by Patrice Chéreau, the director of the legendary Bayreuth-Rings from 1980. Elina Garança, the new star in the Mozart heavens (who released a sensational Mozart recital on Virgin Classics in November 2005), is there as Dorabella.

This Beethoven recording conducted by Daniel Harding is marked out mostly by its bristling, scintillating energy. Despite the brisk (but marvellous) "tempi", the interpretation here shows a great musical clarity alongside a subtlety of detail and beauty of sound. The fiery, apollonian character of these overtures is clearly stressed by this young conductor, and it is simply perfect! Take the "Leonore I" as an example… It (definitely) is the most thrilling recording I ever heard of this exciting work. Harding's personal choices of tempo and rubato seemed a natural part of the music onward flow. The entire set of overtures is remarkable for its consistency of interpretation! Forget Abbado, Barenboim or Gardiner - this is the definitive recording of Beethoven Overtures!

The Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2021, conducted by Daniel Harding with Igor Levit as soloist, was recorded again this year by Sony Classical. The Summer Night Concert, which took place on June 18, 2021, is an outdoor concert held annually since 2008, following the "Concert for Europe" held from 2004 to 2007. The baroque park of Schönbrunn Palace provides an enchanting backdrop for the concert. Among the illustrious conductors who have conducted the Vienna Philharmonic's Summer Night Concert in recent years are Georges Prêtre, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Möst, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Zubin Mehta, Semyon Bychkov and Gustavo Dudamel.

The Summer Night Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic is the world's biggest annual classical open-air concert and will take place in the magical setting of the Schönbrunn Palace Baroque park in Vienna on June 18, 2021. The theme for this year is Fernweh and includes musical favorites from Bernstein, Verdi, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Elgar, Debussy and Holst. It will also include many fantastic Summer Night Concert debuts: SNC debut by pianist Igor Levit & British conductor Daniel Harding.

Almost forty years separate Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) from the Violin Concerto - the former still influenced by the idiom of Brahms and Wagner, the latter deriving from the richness of that later period when Schoenberg managed to combine a multiplicity of approaches within his twelve-note system. Between post-Romantic twilight and 'classical' rigor, Isabelle Faust and company offer us an extraordinarily lively interpretation of some of the most remarkable pages in twentieth-century musical literature.

Petibon has established herself as one of the most interesting and versatile sopranos of our day and has been widely acclaimed for her outstanding acting abilities that make her merge completely with whatever role she sings and represents on stage.

A violinist in a class of his own, Renaud Capuçon shows why he is 'Le Violon Roi'; (The Violin King) in this 3-CD collection. As the leading French violinist of his generation, Capucon records exclusively for Virgin Classics and has a rich discography. The set brings together not only some of his best and most popular performances as a soloist but as a collaborator.

Hyperion is delighted to present the world’s best-loved cello concerto performed by one of the world’s best-loved cellists: national treasure Steven Isserlis. Isserlis has waited 40 years to record this pinnacle of the repertoire, and here with his regular collaborators, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Daniel Harding, this long gestation has proved to be overwhelmingly fruitful. Isserlis writes of the concerto that ‘the power of its emotional journey, expressed with Dvorák’s characteristically folk-like simplicity and directness, offers an irresistible mix of the epic and the touchingly confessional’. The combination of emotional power and simplicity is also a feature of Isserlis’s playing, and part of what makes him such a consummate performer of this work.