Cesar Franck's passionate and sunny Violin Sonata has long been regarded as one of the greatest in the repertoire, and is the work of a composer at the height of his powers. Richard Strauss's Violin Sonata, composed a year after Franck's in 1887, is the work of a young composer on the cusp of discovering his mature voice; lyrical and sumptuous, it has all the hallmarks of his later style. Performed here by distinguished violinist and conductor Augustin Dumay and French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie, this recording marks the duo's recording debut. In addition to the sonatas, this album includes two Franck rarities - Melancolie and the Prelude, Fugue and Variation Op.18 for organ, heard here in an arrangement by Dumay and Lortie. The recording concludes with the wonderful Heifetz arrangement of Strauss's song Auf stillem Waldespfad.

The Meistersaal Sessions are a 6-part series of chamber music theme concerts with the Freigeist Ensemble at the legendary Meistersaal Berlin, conducted by Joolz Gale. The series starts with arrangements of Schönberg, Strauss and Mahler. In collaboration with British photographer Gavin Evans, these club-concert sessions come live from the legendary Meistersaal Berlin, known historically as the “big hall by the Berlin Wall”. Its art-deco building is the current home of Emil Berliner Studios (audio partner for this project) and steeped in many decades of musical history.

There were occasions during the three decades when the LP record ruled supreme - from the 1950s to the 1970s - when the chemistry between an orchestra, its conductor and their record company combined to work a magic that the commitment of long-term recording contracts quite often made possible. Karajan and the Philharmonia; Ansermet and the Suisse Romande; Dorati and the Minneapolis; Münch and the Boston Symphony, Cluytens and the Paris Conservatoire and Previn and the London Symphony are all prime examples of such collaborations. All of these produced recorded performances that are as fine today as they ever were and are all well-represented in the current CD catalogues. Until now there has been one successful recording collaboration that seems almost to have slipped under the radar: the Pittsburgh Symphony, William Steinberg and the Capitol Records producer, Richard C. Jones.

Neeme Järvi’s multi-volume traversal of Richard Strauss with the Scottish National Orchestra was largely successful, and this effort of the early Macbeth symphonic poem and the rare vocal/orchestral song Notturno was a highlight. The Rosenkavalier Waltz sequences are a bit of lightweight filler in contrast to the darker themes of the other works on offer, but as a program is quite interesting.

This performance of Der Rosenkavalier is special for a couple of reasons. Christa Ludwig would soon trade the title role for the role of the Marschallin. It is a shame because she is so well suited to Octavian with her ardent sincerity. Sena Jurinac, no stranger to the role of Octavian, sings the Marschallin with poise. Sylvia Gestzy combines youthful charm with opulence of tone. This performance also marks one of the few times that Walter Berry sang the role of Ochs. He is not as "profundo" as one might want but he is very funny and ultimately creates a loveable oaf. The sound is very good.

Reiner's classic account of Tod & Verklärung is no doubt one of the most sublime and richly expressive versions on record, and can stand test of time, a kind of performance which never loses freshness. Each time you listen, there's something new to discover.

In the wake of its first performance under his own direction in March 1904, Strauss struck a self-satisfied note: “Domestica has turned out a success, it sounds great, but it’s very difficult.” The extreme technical demands and the large resources required – the intimate details of the composer’s private life are translated into a monumental tone poem in his Sinfonia domestica.

Much like Richard Wagner, Arnold Schoenberg, and Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss truly stretched the abilities and the dimensions of the orchestra in his works, especially the symphonic tone poems by which most of the general music public know him by. Apart from creating works that require very large orchestral forces, Strauss also took chances in the musical keys that he utilized throughout his works, never actually settling on just one for his pieces, but often many. And to make thing seven more interesting, he often made very difficult subject matters, including literary works, the basis for his tone poems. Such is the case with this 1980 London/Decca recording by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Antal Dorati that highlights three of the composer's works in that arena.

Marek Janowski, Music Director of the Suisse Romande Orchestra since 2004, has made an excellent recording for Pentatone with that orchestra–a coupling of symphonies of Franck and Chausson. With the Pittsburgh Symphony, he has recorded the four Brahms symphonies: Symphony No. 1, Symphonies 1 and 3, and Symphony No. 4. These Strauss performances were recorded live in Pittsburgh's Heinz Hall October/November 2008, produced and recorded by Job Maarse, who did a fine job.

Elīna Garanča reflects facets of night-time on her latest Deutsche Grammophon release “When Night Falls”. The soprano chose a selection of orchestral songs, as well as works for voice and piano or guitar, that she performs together with the Orquestra Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, the Berlin Music Ensemble and the DG artists Albrecht Mayer and Raphaël Feuillâtre, among others. Commenting on the spectrum of rich colours from sunset to the silence of the night, Garanča notes: "I hope this music will allow listeners to tune out the world for a few minutes and completely immerse themselves in the special magic of the hours of night.”

The discography of Strauss’s last opera is not exactly crowded, but the two existing accounts provide formidable competition for any newcomer. First there was Sawallisch, conducting the Philharmonia for EMI in 1957 (unfortunately in mono) and a cast led by Schwarzkopf, Ludwig and Fischer-Dieskau. Then, in 1971, came that other supreme Straussian, Karl Böhm, with Janowitz, Troyanos and (again) Fischer-Dieskau, recorded in Munich for DG. The new Decca set brings together many of today’s leading exponents of Strauss’s roles, dominated, for me, by the unsurpassed Clairon of Brigitte Fassbaender, now alas, never to be heard on stage again following her retirement. Heilmann and Bär make an ardent pair of rival suitors, Hagegård an admirable Count and Halem a sonorous, characterful La Roche. (There is a delightful link with the past history of the opera in the person of Hans Hotter: he sang Olivier in the 1942 premiere, La Roche in the 1957 Sawallisch set, and here, at 84 when recorded in December 1993, a one-line cameo as a servant.) For many, though, the set’s desirability will rest on Te Kanawa’s Countess.

Throughout history men have feared madwomen, burning them as witches, confining them in asylums and subjecting them to psychoanalysis – yet, they have also been fascinated, unable to resist fantasizing about them. For their new disc, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have created a programme that explores the responses of a variety of composers to women whose stories have left them vulnerable and exposed. As a motto they have chosen an aphorism by Nietzsche: ‘There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.’

A selection of Richard Strauss’s most-loved lieder and songs, and Elisabeth’s arias from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, the role in which Lise Davidsen will make her debut at Bayreuth Festival. Plus Ariadne’s aria from Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos: her 2017 Glyndebourne debut in the title role was named “one of those ‘I was there’ moments” (The Times).
Also includes Strauss’s iconic Four Last Songs, originally premiered by Decca’s Kirsten Flagstad. Recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra, who performed the premiere of the Four Last Songs, and Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

On October 6, 1953, RCA held experimental stereophonic sessions in New York's Manhattan Center with Leopold Stokowski conducting a group of New York musicians in performances of Enesco's Roumanian Rhapsody No. 1 and the waltz from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. There were additional stereo tests in December, again in the Manhattan Center, this time with Pierre Monteux conducting members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In February 1954, RCA made its first commercial stereophonic recordings, taping the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, in a performance of The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz.