Arcangelo Corelli, one of Italy's greatest baroque composers, wrote a large amount of music in all the genres popular at the time but it was these 12 Violin Sonatas Op. 5 composed just before the 18th century was about to dawn that really cemented Corelli's fame as the foremost model for violin writing.

„Here are examples of 'The Karajan Effect' at its most positive, and sounding, in these new transfers, fractionally more open, focused and fresh than before, with the billowing bass moderated and the dynamic range extended. Along with Karajan's own imaginative deployment of orchestral colour (to take one example: the extra gong with barely damped striker at the end of Pictures), the Berlin Jesus-Christus Kirche acoustics of these 1964-6 recordings add their own wonderful coloration and atmosphere (dark and cavernous at appropriate moments in Pictures).

Although the late Sviatoslav Richter spent his later years concentrating on Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn, he never completely abandoned the music of his native country. His reading of Rachmaninov's most popular concerto, captured in fine late-'50s stereo, is one of the most glorious ever recorded. Richter's amazing technique is completely up to the demands of Rachmaninov's difficult writing, and he plays the heart-on-sleeve melodies with such refined intensity that they never sound sentimental. This performance is a truly amazing example of great pianism, very strongly supported by the fine orchestra and its little-known conductor.

The two numbered concertos, which Franz Liszt revised extensively before letting them be published some 25 years after their conception, frame the single-movement Malédiction for piano and strings which Liszt composed in 1833 and revised in 1840, but which was never published in his lifetime. Stepping into Liszt's shoes for the present recording is Alexandre Kantorow. Born in 1997, Alexandre is here supported by his father Jean-Jacques Kantorow conducting the Tapiola Sinfonietta, a team with a number of highly acclaimed recordings to their credit.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt once said, “Schubert is the composer who is closest to my heart” – and in this edition, Harnoncourt and the Berliner Philharmoniker present a brilliant and multifaceted portrait of the composer. It of course includes Schubert’s symphonies – from the too little-known early works to the “Unfinished” and the “Great” C major Symphony. With Schubert’s final two masses, central works of Romantic sacred music are also represented, plus there is a first-class discovery with the opera Alfonso und Estrella.