Arthaus presents the Vienna State Opera’s outstandingly cast new production of Werther on DVD. The production was the Vienna State Opera debut for the young Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan – the Argentinian tenor Marcelo Álvarez, took the title role. Although he had already secured an international reputation through his performances in leading opera houses all over the world, this was his first appearance in the premiere of a production in Vienna. His Charlotte, on this occasion the young Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, joined the Vienna State Opera in 2003.

The third and final volume in the complete recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Concerti, by François-Frédéric Guy and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Philipe Jordan. Following the critically-acclaimed first two volumes in this series the flourishing musical partnership between François-Frédéric Guy and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Philipe Jordan continues with Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3. Beethoven’s Piano concerto No. 2 in B flat major Op. 19 took 15 years to write and was the earliest piano concerto that Beethoven himself deemed appropriate for presentation to the public.

French pianist François-Frédéric Guy certainly has the prerequisite technique to take on Beethoven's very difficult First Piano Concerto and his very, very difficult Fifth Piano Concerto. As this 2008 Naïve recording demonstrates, he can surmount both the racing scale and intricate filigree of the First Concerto's cadenzas and the rolling arpeggios and massive double trills in the Fifth Concerto's opening flourishes. Guy also has the strong but nuanced tone to balance power and sensitivity in the two concerto's central solo movements as well as the rhythmic vivacity to keep the music moving forward in the works' closing Rondos.

Doktor Faust remained a fragment at the time of the composer's death. Busoni died in 1924, unable to complete what he himself described as his ''state masterpiece'' - an opera to which he had a deep personal attachment. The missing scenes from the score - the appearance of Helen and Faust's closing monologue - were completed by his pupil, Philipp Jarnach, whom Busoni had become acquainted with during his period in exile in Zürich. In this form the opera was given its first performance in Dresden in 1925. Then in the 1980s the conductor Anthony Beaumont came across previously undiscovered sketches by Busoni and produced a new version of Doktor Faust, which was premiered in Bologna in 1985. The current recording uses the Jarnach score.