Early 2026 heavyweights include Sir Adrian Boult's stereo recordings on Warner, four operas from the 1954 Bayreuth Festival (with casts including Martha Mödl, Hans Hotter, Wolfgang Windgassen and Astrid Varnay) on Note One, Angela Hewitt's complete Bach series on Hyperion, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt's collected recordings with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on Teldec.
Sir Adrian Boult: Complete Warner Recordings
The Stereo Recordings 1956 - 1978
Following the issue of Boult's complete mono recordings (1920-1957) last September, Warner presents all of the stereo recordings which the British conductor made for HMV, World Record Club, Columbia, Pye Nixa, EMI Classics, Warner Classics and Waverley. Newly remastered by Art & Sons, stand-outs include milestone accounts of Holst's The Planets, the Vaughan Williams symphonies, Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (with Nicolai Gedda in the title-role) and The Kingdom, violin concertos by Williamson, Berkeley and Bruch with Yehudi Menuhin, and complete sets of the Schumann and Brahms symphonies.
Available Format: 79 CDs
Maria Tipo: The Complete Erato and Fonit Cetra Recordings
Maria Tipo (piano)
Nicknamed 'the Neapolitan Horowitz', Tipo shot to international prominence after winning the 1949 Geneva International Music Competition at the age of seventeen and devoted much of her energy to teaching in the latter part of her career, with pupils including Nelson Goerner and Andrea Lucchesini. Released to mark the first anniversary of her death, this collection includes eleven albums of Clementi (whom Tipo viewed as a forerunner of Liszt), five discs of Bach, the Chopin Nocturnes, Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 4, and Schumann's Kinderszenen and Études symphoniques.
Available Format: 24 CDs
Angela Hewitt: The Bach Recordings
Angela Hewitt (piano)
Hailed by The Times as 'one of the record glories of our age', Hewitt's survey of Bach's keyboard music was recorded between 1994 and 2018, and is presented here as a 27-CD original-jackets collection. The accounts of the Six Partitas, English Suites and Two-Part Inventions have all featured as top choices on Radio 3's Building A Library, whilst the Gramophone Guide applauded her 'lightly articulated and elegantly phrased' playing in Book Two of The Well-Tempered Clavier and BBC Music Magazine deemed her interpretation of The Art of Fugue as 'unparalleled' for its 'sheer beauty of sound'.
Available Format: 27 CDs
The Art of Samuil Feinberg
Samuil Feinberg (piano)
Born in Odessa in 1890, Feinberg was the first pianist to give a complete performance of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier in the USSR, and this set opens with his recording of the work from the late 1950s; it was described as 'a uniquely special document' by MusicWeb International, whilst Gramophone declared that Feinberg 'commands a range of keyboard colour that at times compares to Rachmaninoff'. The collection also includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Scriabin and Feinberg himself (with several of the latter recorded on his home Bechstein piano).
Available Format: 15 CDs
The Berliner Philharmoniker and Karajan: 1970–1979 Live in Berlin
Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan
This is the second instalment of the Berliner Philharmoniker's series of live recordings from the archives, capturing complete concerts and newly remastered from original analogue sources; much of the material has never been released before. The repertoire includes Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1 and 3, Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, Metamorphosen and Ein Heldenleben, Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (with Agnes Baltsa and Hermann Winkler), and works by Beethoven, Berlioz, Dvořák, Bruckner, Mussorgsky, Berg, Webern and Penderecki.
Available Format: 20 SACDs
Doráti's Haydn: The Complete Decca Recordings
Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Doráti
Recorded between 1969 and 1972, Doráti's cycle of the Haydn symphonies was Building A Library's Top Choice in 2009 and was described as 'the finest complete set of Haydn symphonies yet recorded' by Classics Today that same year. Presented in new 24-bit/192kHz transfers from the original master tapes, they are supplemented here by the Hungarian conductor's accounts of The Creation, The Season and Il ritorno di Tobia, with soloists including Lucia Popp, Ileana Cotrubas, Kurt Moll and Benjamin Luxon.
Available Format: 41 CDs
Nikolaus Harnoncourt: The Complete Teldec Recordings Vol. 1
Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Released to mark the tenth anniversary of Harnoncourt's death, this anthology brings together all of the recordings which he made with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with highlights including landmark sets of Beethoven's complete symphonies and the piano concertos (with Pierre-Laurent Aimard), Mozart concert arias with Edita Gruberová, Robert Schumann's symphonies and Genoveva, and Dvořák's Slavonic Dances. A second volume comprising his recordings with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra will follow in June.
Released 27th February.
Available Format: 28 CDs + DVD Video
Bayreuth 1954
Chor and Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, Joseph Keilberth, Eugen Jochum, Hans Knappertsbusch
This set brings together four complete live recordings from the 1954 Festival: Tannhäuser (with Vinay and Brouwenstijn), Die Walküre (Lorenz, Mödl, Hotter and Varnay), Lohengrin (Windgassen, Nilsson, Varnay and a young Fischer-Dieskau as the Herald), and Parsifal (with Windgassen, Hotter and Mödl). The set captures several notable step-ins among the lower voices: Theo Adam (who had previously sung minor roles at the Festival) replaced Ludwig Weber and Josef Greindl as Fasolt and King Heinrich, whilst Greindl made his Bayreuth debut as Gurnemanz in lieu of Weber.
Released 20th February.
Available Format: 13 CDs
