Classical music round up 2015 part II

From time to time I do post short amounts around my classical music tastes and one conductor I discovered in my earlier years was the late Herbert von Karajan and a year ago a large 13 set of boxes of his recordings for EMI Records  came out covering the two period he recorded for them in the UK, France and Germany.

The first and unfortunate thing to say is he never did a complete set of the Finnish composer Sibelius' symphonies although he championed them  in the 1940's, missing the Third completely.
This box has his recordings from 1976 through 1981 with the Berlin Philharmonic taking in symphonies 1,2,4,5 and 6 and the Tone poems which have their own cd.
I owned a few of these on record at the time in SQ Quadraphonic  so it's nice to have a complete set carefully remastered using 96/24 mastering techniques being personal favourites.

This set in some ways is the catch all loose ends bit of the collection but having a  good  number of his recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra to which he was the first conductor and stem from the early days of the LP record although the sound is remarkable even if a good many were taped in mono.
This set covers his 1950's recordings of Sibelius which the composer himself  was highly impressed by, something to bear in mind given the contempt some critics show for his interpretations as well as a amazing account of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique taped in 1954 but in stereo and among a program of 'lollipop's', there's a nice rendition of Waldteufel's Skater's Waltz which I danced to in a wheelchair as a kid.

There were reasons for picking up this  portion of the complete set too, namely that it included his 1950's recording of Tchaikovsky including the 1954 Fifth symphony I had as a child and my love of the Philharmonia who play on nearly all these recordings of Russian works by the likes of Mussorgsky and Stravinsky.

 Rounding things off, this 2 cd set of his 1960's recordings in stereo of Symphonies 4-7 is a must being very well regarded during the lp era and features his only stereo recording of the Seventh symphony. It belongs next to  my original mid 1980's cd of Finlandia and other Tone Poems  recorded  digitally for DG and the 1987 DG Galleria re-issue of Christine Ferras's 1960's account with them of his Violin Concerto.
Selections will be written in lossless to micro sd card for playing on my Fiio digital audio player.