The Berlin Philharmonic is a German orchestra based in Berlin. It is one of the most popular, acclaimed and well-respected orchestras in the world.
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of labels in 1999. Deutsche Grammophon is the world's oldest surviving established record company. Presidents of the company are Frank Briegmann, Chairman and CEO Central Europe of Universal Music Group and Clemens Trautmann.
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the Nazi era, he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and during World War II he conducted at the Berlin State Opera. Generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was a controversial but dominant figure in European classical music from the mid-1950s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate, he sold an estimated 200 million records.
John Richard Lill is a British classical pianist.
Sergiu Celibidache was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Radio France, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and many other European orchestras such as the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra or the London Symphony Orchestra.
Eugen Jochum was a German conductor, best known for his interpretations of the music of Anton Bruckner, Carl Orff, and Johannes Brahms, among others.
Karl Richter was a German conductor, choirmaster, organist, and harpsichordist.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was a German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music. One of the most famous Lieder performers of the post-war period, he is best known as a singer of Franz Schubert's Lieder, particularly "Winterreise" of which his recordings with accompanists Gerald Moore and Jörg Demus are still critically acclaimed half a century after their release.
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist. Born and raised in Rheinfelden, Baden-Württemberg, Mutter started playing the violin at age five and continued studies in Germany and Switzerland. She was supported early in her career by Herbert von Karajan and made her orchestral debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1977. Since Mutter gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, she has recorded over 50 albums, mostly with the Deutsche Grammophon label, and performed as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide and as a recitalist. Her primary instrument is the Lord Dunn–Raven Stradivarius violin.
Walter Berry was an Austrian lyric bass-baritone who enjoyed a prominent career in opera. He has been cited as one of several exemplary operatic bass-baritones of his era.
Alexis Sigismund Weissenberg was a Bulgarian-born French pianist.
Géza Anda was a Swiss-Hungarian pianist. A celebrated interpreter of classical and romantic repertoire, particularly noted for his performances and recordings of Mozart, he was also considered to be a tremendous interpreter of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms and Bartók. In his heyday he was regarded as an amazing artist, possessed of a beautiful, natural and flawless technique that gave his concerts a unique quality. Most of his recordings were made on the Deutsche Grammophon label.
The Grand Prix du Disque for Instrumental and Symphonic Music is awarded by the Académie Charles Cros, L'Abbaye, 02570 Chézy sur Marne, France. Categories vary from year to year, and multiple awards may be given in the same year in the same exact category. Instrumental and Symphonic music may include solo & orchestra (concerto) or pure symphonic music. Other subcategories have included classical symphonic music, contemporary symphonic music and modern concerto.
Jan Lisiecki is a Canadian-born classical pianist of Polish ancestry He performs internationally with orchestras and conductors. He has been a recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon since the age of 15. At age 18, Lisiecki was the recipient of Gramophone’s Young Artist Award and the Leonard Bernstein Award.
Otto Gerdes was a German conductor and record producer.
The Russian and American classical virtuoso pianist Vladimir Horowitz was a recording artist for over 60 years; beginning in 1926 on a piano roll system for Welte-Mignon, then with audio recordings, starting in 1928 for the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Victor. Horowitz continued to record for a variety of record labels throughout his life. Between 1962 and 1973 he recorded for Columbia Masterworks In 1975, Horowitz returned to RCA, with which he recorded a series of live recitals. For the last years of his life, between 1985 and 1989, Horowitz recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Horowitz's final recording, with Sony Classical, was completed in November 1989, four days before his death. This final recording consisted of repertoire that he had never previously recorded. His discography contains numerous albums and compilations of works by a variety of composers. Horowitz has also appeared in several video items, most of these were produced in the later years of his life.
The International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) are music awards first awarded 6 April 2011. ICMA replace the Cannes Classical Awards formerly awarded at MIDEM. The jury consists of music critics of magazines Andante, Crescendo, Fono Forum, Gramofon, Kultura, Musica, Musik & Theater, Opera, Pizzicato, Rondo Classic, Scherzo, with radio stations MDR Kultur (Germany), Orpheus Radio 99.2FM (Russia), Radio 100,7 (Luxembourg), the International Music and Media Centre (IMZ) (Austria), website Resmusica.com (France) and radio Classic (Finland).
This is an undated alphabetical list of audio and video recordings by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. Founded in 1842, the orchestra has a long history of recording music dating back to 1905. The orchestra has made numerous critically acclaimed recordings, of which several have been ranked as the greatest classical recordings of all time, such as Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 with Carlos Kleiber and Wagner's complete Ring des Nibelungen with Sir Georg Solti. The orchestra has primarily made recordings with the Deutsche Grammophon, EMI and Decca labels.
Anatol Ugorski was a Russian-born German classical pianist and academic teacher. He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory, and played works by controversial Western composers such as Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez rather than the usual repertoire for Russian pianists. An incident at a concert of Boulez in 1968 made Soviet authorities doubt his political reliability, and they largely interrupted his career for more than ten years. In 1982, he became professor at the Leningrad Conservatory. When his daughter suffered antisemitic harassment in 1990, the family fled to East Berlin, where they lived in a refugee camp for several months. Irene Dische managed to arrange for him to record Beethoven's Diabelli Variations for Deutsche Grammophon in 1991, which launched a career of performing and recording. He became professor of the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, remaining in the post until 2007.
The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) was one of the most important symphonists of the early twentieth century: his seven symphonies, written between 1899 and 1924, are the core of his oeuvre and stalwarts of the standard concert repertoire. Many of classical music's conductor–orchestra partnerships have recorded the complete set, colloquially known as the "Sibelius cycle". Specifically, the standard cycle includes:
