It was the heroic age, the postwar age when American pianists first made their mark in the great wide world. The heroes took many forms: the apollonian Van Cliburn, the dionysic Byron Janis, and the mercurial Gary Graffman, along with many, many others. The most intellectually brilliant and technically incendiary member of the pantheon was Leon Fleisher. While other heroes rode the Russian war horses of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov to fame and glory, Fleisher stuck with Beethoven and Brahms, the Alpha and Omega of German composers for the piano. In these Columbia recordings of Beethoven's Third and Fourth piano concertos from the 1959 and 1961, Fleisher teamed with George Szell, the sternest of living conductors, leading the Cleveland Orchestra, the most virtuosic of American orchestras, and the results are transcendent.

Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (sometimes renumbered as Symphony No. 7, in accordance with the revised Deutsch catalogue and the Neue Schubert-Ausgabe), commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony (German: Unvollendete), is a musical composition that Schubert started in 1822 but left with only two movements—though he lived for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages orchestrated, also survives.

The Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43, is a four-movement work for orchestra written from 1901 to 1902 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. He began writing the symphony in winter 1901 in Rapallo, Italy, shortly after the successful premiere of the popular Finlandia. Sibelius said, "My second symphony is a confession of the soul."

Szell's performance is again of quite a different order, one of the very finest ever put on disc, white hot even beyond Bernstein's. The late John Culshaw, producer at the sessions in Walthamstow Assembly Hall in 1962, used to enjoy telling the story of winding up an already angry George Szell. That inspired tyrant of a conductor was furious at the start of the session to find that many players were not the same as those who had just given the concert performance with him. When he came back to listen to the first playback Culshaw deliberately kept the controls rather low, making the result seem dull. That prompted Szell, back on the podium, to unleash a force in the subsequent takes that has to be heard to be believed.

The air on Mt. Olympus must have been something like that in Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche when, in September 1969, the threesome of Richter, Oistrakh and Rostropovich joined Herbert von Karajan for this majestic recording of Beethoven’s underrated Triple Concerto. That there could have been such a meeting of the minds in this gathering of greats is difficult to believe, until one remembers that the three soloists were frequent collaborators who all spoke the same musical language, and after years in the trenches knew each other and their conductor very well. As one would expect, the solo work of the three Russians is brilliant and deeply musical. But just as delightful is the way they adjust from solo to ensemble roles and play together, with perfect unanimity, in the duet and trio passages. Karajan and the Berliners provide a monumental accompaniment, weighty, powerful, and rich in tone. The recording, one of the best from EMI in this venue, has been remastered in exemplary fashion and is impressively detailed and vivid.

George Szell's Philips Concertgebouw legacy includes some distinguished recordings, with the scintillating Midsummer Night's Dream suite taking pride of place. Few if any rivals can match the ''Scherzo'' (not even Szell's later Cleveland recording is as buoyant or precise), while the Overture is extraordinarily well drilled and the ''Nocturne'', although cool, has a genuine sense of repose. The Schubert Rosamunde excerpts display all the drive and textural clarity that Szell habitually brought to, say, the Great C major Symphony…

George Szell was the greatest opera conductor who never recorded a complete opera. Early in his career, he decided to leave the opera house because he was unable to work with what he considered to be the compromising conditions of modern opera production. The most tantalizing recording he never conducted was the complete "Ring" for London. The honor went instead to Sir Georg Solti, and although Solti's work was hardly inconsiderable, this exceptional disc gives us some sense of what we lost.

This Sony-made 30CD classical music collection covers almost all classical music, from the early Baroque period represented by Bach to the schools of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms represent romantic, national and even modern musical schools led by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, etc. representative, everything wonderful and vivid.

This Sony-made 30CD classical music collection covers almost all classical music, from the early Baroque period represented by Bach to the schools of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms represent romantic, national and even modern musical schools led by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, etc. representative, everything wonderful and vivid.

Every major conductor, and most not-so-major ones, comes around to recording Eine kleine Nachtmusik, but not so many do it as well as George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra strings. And let’s face it, you won’t find a period-instrument ensemble that plays with anything like this level of polish. The fact is, Szell’s conception of Mozart was not terribly far from “period” sensibilities: restrained use of vibrato, incisive rhythms, crisp ensemble, lively tempos, but also a welcome degree of warmth to the sound and of course incredible ensemble discipline and some of the best players on the planet. And he had real period instruments, meaning performers who owned top quality old violins and bows, not inferior modern reproductions of them. The result is as lovely a performance of Mozart’s perennially delicious Serenade as we are ever likely to hear.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the first release of never before available performances by one of the defining partnerships of modern American music in the specially priced two-CD set George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra: The Forgotten Recordings. Long considered one of Americas Big Five orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra entered its second century in 2018 and earlier this year was hailed by The New York Times as Americas finest [orchestra] still. The Forgotten Recordings features eight historic performances made for the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1954 and 1955 seven of which are first releases that have been restored and remastered by the multi-awardwinning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also provides extensive and informative booklet notes.

George Szell owned the First Piano Concerto. He played the opening movement like no one else, and he recorded the work with three outstanding pianists: Sir Clifford Curzon, Rudolf Serkin, and this performance with Anton Fleischer. When I say this is the best of the three, I'm making a tough choice, but Fleischer brings a youthful vigor and rage to the music that complements Szell's fiery accompaniment so well that they sound like they're both performing from the same musical brain.

This version of Brahms's massive First Concerto was an instant classic when released in 1962 and recommending it now is still a no-brainer, especially in this effective remastering. Curzon gets to the heart of the music. He captures the high drama of the symphonic opening movement, and his rapt concentration makes a profound effect in the Adagio, famous for his controversially slow tempo. Szell is his equal here, conducting with passion. The way he screws up the tension in the orchestra's opening statement and then, through judicious rubato and a warming of the string tone, makes the second subject come alive is a mini-lesson in great conducting. With Boult, Curzon's Franck is on a similarly lofty plane, and the Litolff is a worthy filler.

Schubert's two greatest orchestral works on one CD at budget price–if the performances were indifferent this would be no bargain at all, but they are superb. In fact, these versions may have been equaled, but they have never been surpassed. George Szell understood intuitively how to balance Romantic passion with intellectual discipline. In difficult pieces like the Schubert Ninth, he rose to the challenge like an Olympic athlete after a new world record. The recordings he made in his prime with his own Cleveland Orchestra comprise one of the most satisfying legacies in the history of classical music on disc. Within even this impressive legacy, these performances stand high.

The Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, is the last solo concerto by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1894 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan, but was premiered by the English cellist Leo Stern. The Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90, B. 166, (also called Dumky trio from the subtitle Dumky) is a composition by Antonín Dvořák for piano, violin and cello. It is among the composer's best-known works. At the same time it is a prominent example for a piece of chamber music deviating strongly from the customary form of classical chamber music – both in terms of the number of movements and of their formal construction.