Symphonies 40 & 41

Once in a while something surprisingly magical happens — the combination of a certain orchestra and conductor, which was never expected to work out in the first place, does so with great success. When, in the early seventies, Josef Krips and the Concertgebouw Orchestra started playing the Mozart symphonies, of which we've included Numbers 40 and 41 in this set, there was magic in the building all right and the Dutch players sounded as fresh and polished in Mozart as ever before.

You may have heard these brilliant recordings, but you've never heard them in 24 bits-96kHz sound before … here's your chance!

Fifty years on, and the mere mention of Philips Records is still enough to conjure qualities that were first acclaimed when the long-playing vinyl record was in its infancy. In those days, the Dutch Philips label was renowned for the warmth of its recordings and the supreme musicianship of its artists, many of whom went on to achieve legendary status.

Philips 50 brings the excitement of those days back to life on 50 CD re-releases, each of which is enhanced by a sophisticated audio restoration process (96kHz ‹ 24 bit technology) that extracts the maximum impact from the original tapes. And yet not everything on Philips 50 is "old". Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's digital recording of Schubert's achingly beautiful song-cycle Winterreise with Alfred Brendel is as great a recording as any and enjoys the additional benefit of full digital sound. Valery Gergiev's rugged and spontaneous digital Kirov recording of Prokofiev's complete Romeo and Juliet ballet was widely acclaimed when it first appeared, and makes a welcome reappearance at mid-price. Then there's Mitsuko Uchida's atmospheric and immaculately sculpted reading of Debussy's 12 Etudes, classic recordings in every sense of the term, and a fine example of Philips' legendary piano sound. Zoltán Kocsis' benchmark Bartók recordings provide another.