This is the latest and, they tell us, the last of EMI’s Simon Rattle Edition, gathering together the conductor’s complete forays into certain composers and repertoire. As with any such project the sets hitherto released have contained both treasures and duds. Even though not everything here is perfect, this set sends the series out on a high with his complete Vienna recording of the Beethoven symphonies.

Karl Richter was regarded as one of the great Bach conductors of the twentieth century, noted for solid regularity in rhythms and a serious approach to the music, though he was not given to following the changing pronouncements of musicologists concerning historical accuracy in performance. He was brought up in the tradition of German Protestant religious music; his father was a minister in the central German regions near where Johann Sebastian Bach had lived. Richter learned piano and organ, and as he approached his 12th birthday entered the Kreuzschule school in Dresden.

The second part of Patrice Chéreau's epoch-making Bayreuth "Ring" is a radical re-imaging of "Die Walküre", unprecedented in its psychological penetration. "This Wagnerian drama", says Chéreau, "which is at once classical theatre and domestic comedy, enables us to interpret the myths in terms that are both anecdotical and sublime … With Wagner one is dealing with a drama tuned virtually white-hot by the music." "Nothing ever seen before on television has given a better insight into Wagner's genius." (The New York Times)

In this recording of Bach’s Suite No. 1, John Eliot Gardiner follows Passepieds I and II with Bach’s own setting of the chorale Dir, dir, Jehova, will ich singen BWV 299. The joyous text celebrates praise and discipleship, prolonging the suite’s exuberant mood. No other recorded version features a vocal tailpiece, but if you don’t like it, simply program your player to skip track 8. It’s good to find both parts of the Overtures to these works repeated (Frans Brüggen omits second-section repeats), but at times Gardiner can seem too rugged and unyielding for what is, after all, ceremonial or occasional music.

Samuel Scheidt was one of the most interesting Lutheran composers of the early 17th century. Like his famous contemporary Heinrich Schütz, he combined the polyphonic tradition with the new styles from Italy. His Cantiones Sacrae for eight voices mark the summit of Renaissance musical style; even though Protestant chorales are integrated into the work, Scheidt does not hesitate to use expressive effects that originated in the Italian madrigal style.

In Patrice Chéreau's illuminating, violent Bayreuth production of Das Rheingold, Wotan wears the brocade coat of feudal times while the Rhine seems to be a reservoir with a modern power station - but, as Chéreau states, it "could also be many other things… a menacing construction, a theatrical machine to produce a river, an allegorical shape that today generates energy: perhaps a mythological presence, the mythology of our time… The gods' ascent to Valhalla (is) a defiant flight into the future."

Lobgesang, Mendelssohn's ''Hymn of Praise'', is no longer a rarity on disc, with a dozen versions listed. That makes it timely that Spering, following up the success of Herreweghe's Harmonia Mundi version of Elijah (4/94), here presents a performance in period style. When the composer's preference for fast speeds is well documented, and has so convincingly been followed up by his latterday successor at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Kurt Masur, it is perhaps surprising that Spering is far more relaxed in his choice of tempos. His overall timing—64'48'' as against Masur's 58'32''—shows what a wide discrepancy there is, and in no way does he let the music drag or become sentimental. For with clean, crisp textures this is a most refreshing performance, full of incidental beauties, of a work that for several generations was regarded as too sweet on the one hand, over-inflated on the other. Spering's clean directness and his obvious affection for the music reverses that jaundiced judgement.

Solti's interpretations held more than surface excitement. In conducting Beethoven, for example, he long held that the symphonies should be played with all their repeats to maintain their structural integrity, and he carefully rethought his approach to tempo, rhythm, and balance in those works toward the end of his life. Solti began as a pianist, commencing his studies at age six and making his first public appearance at 12. When he was 13 he enrolled at Budapest's Franz Liszt Academy of Music, studying piano mainly with Dohnányi and, for a very short time, Bartók. He also took composition courses with Kodály.

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately trained at Chetham's School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the International Opera School of the Royal College of Music. Having won both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and Royal Overseas League Award in the same year, she attended the prestigious Academy of the Verbier Festival. She writes of this project: 'It has been my great pleasure to record with Joseph once again. We have long shared a mutual passion for early-twentieth-century-romantic Lieder and talked of making a disc including songs by Mahler and Strauss.

Made In Germany was a real musical transformation for Amon Düül II. If you took this album, and ADII's first album "Phallus Dei" and played them both for an unknowing listener, they would never even suspect it was the same band! The songs like "Ludwig" have an almost Beatlesesque quality to them (albeit on much more drugs). Ambitious vocal harmony arrangements, pristine production values, orchestral flourishes… Amon Duul? Anyway, this album is a masterwork of a completely different sort than their earlier releases, so naturally many fans will not still be onboard at this point. Short, vaguely Floydian spacy instrumental breaks replace the full-on sonic assaults of yore, and the main feature is… songs. Beautiful, sometimes achingly melancholic, sometimes witty and humorous, always honed like a gem; this is top-notch songwriting without ever losing ADII's keen eye for ambition.

Four years after the superb ‘Membra Jesu nostri’, the Ricercar Consort once again turns to Buxtehude.The majority of the cantatas in this recording are centred on Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. With the both dramatic and comforting sounds of his cantatas, Buxtehude succeeded in shifting the focus from human suffering to divine help, thus giving people a foretaste of heavenly harmony and perfection.

Four-part double CD series - comprehensive and first cross-label documentation of the only relevant German contribution to the international phenomenon of rock music.