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On 3^rd March, 2014, the international premiere of no less than four albums took place. You have already listened to a selection from the L̕ amour album, signed by the tenor Juan Diego Florez during the Arpeggio programme, which you can replay on the website of the Vote for the Best Classical Music Album of 2014 campaign; an album that contains contemporary works signed by Bryce Desser and Johnny Greenwood – the last one being the composer of the soundtrack of the movie There Will Be Blood. On this very same day, Robert Schumann̕ s four symphonies performed by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Yannick Nezet Seguin were released; they can be listened to on CD Review, during the Arpeggio programme as of this Wednesday, 5^th March – an album also included in the Vote for the Best Classical Music Album of 2014 campaign. Beside these, today the British conductor̕ s Daniel Harding̕ s latest album: An Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss, interpreted by the Saito Kinen Orchestra of Japan, is to be released.

Of course, we look at this recording as a one-of-a-kind work – Japan being so far from Romania, not only geographically speaking, but also from the cultural point of view, but I can assure you that this recording is indeed a first class musical piece. The Saito Kinen Orchestra is the formal nucleus of the Japanese Saito Kinen Festival that takes place in Matsumoto, found at the centre of the Japanese Alps. The festival includes top Japanese musicians who perform in Europe and in the United States of America, but also guest musicians, mainly in the woodwind section and member artists of the orchestras from Berlin, Vienna, Philadelphia and Boston. The British magazine Gramophone added the Saito Kinen Orchestra in a list containing the world̕ s greatest orchestras.

This album should have been recorded initially under the Seiji Ozawa̕ s baton, but he had to give up this project due to health problems. Therefore, he has been replaced by the thirty-eight year old conductor, Daniel Harding, who is among the very forefront of today's worldwide young generation of conductors.

It is a fact that this album celebrates Richard Strauss̕ 150^th anniversary this year and creates a spectacular version of the Alpine Symphony, having an orchestra with 125 instrumentalists while the recording made by using the latest techniques in rendering the musical notes without diminishing their beauty and giving the impression that the orchestra is in fact playing live.

This is indeed an unforgettable version of the Alpine Symphony – the highest calibre one can reach by combining a performing art and sound techniques – which proves that even if 100 years have passed since the first performance of this work, we can still find new ways of conducting it.