Georg Friedrich Haendel (1685-1759)
Zadok the Priest
Le Messie

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
La Valkyrie
Les Maîtres chanteurs de Nuremberg

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Aida
Nabucco
Rigoletto

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Variations Enigma
Pomp & circumstance March n° 1, op. 39

Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Les Pêcheurs de Perles
Carmen

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
Orphée aux Enfers

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)
Danse slave n° 8

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Turandot
Madame Butterfly
Gianni Schicchi

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Danse macabre
Le Carnaval des Animaux

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Adagio for Strings

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Boléro

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Finlandia

Carl Orff (1895-1982)
Carmina Burana

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Pavane

Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918)
Jerusalem

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
The Liberty Bell March
The Stars and Stripes Forever

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
Le Barbier de Séville

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Le Beau Danube Bleu
Pizzicato Polka

Eduardo di Capua (1865-1917)
O sole mio

Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978)
Gayaneh

Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovski (1840-1893)
Ouverture "1812"
La Belle au bois dormant

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
also sprach Zarathustra

Franz von Suppé (1819-1895)
Light Cavalry

George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Rhapsody in Blue

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)
Gold and silver Waltz

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Peer Gynt

Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Les Planètes

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Ouverture "Les Hébrides"

Modest Moussorgski (1839-1881)
Tableaux d'une exposition

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
L'Italiana in Algeri

Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)
Things to Come

Alexandre Borodin (1833-1887)
Prince Igor

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Philip Ellis, direction
Owain Arwel Hughes, direction
Nick Davies, direction
John Rigby, direction
Barry Wordsworth, direction
Robin Stapleton, direction

Classical hits from one of the world’s great orchestras: a fabulous introduction to the world of music at a super-budget price. Zadok the Priest was written in 1727 for the Coronation of King George II, but it’s now more familiar to millions of football fans as the anthem for the Champions League. You may never have listened to a Wagner opera, but if you’ve seen Apocalypse Now, you’ll know The Ride of the Valkyries. Composing a slow movement for a string quartet, Samuel Barber could hardly have imagined that his Adagio would tap so deeply into universal feelings of grief and reflection once it had become known as his Adagio for strings and used in countless TV programmes and film soundtracks. Classical music is everywhere, and on this 4CD set you can enjoy more than 40 of the most thrilling and powerful pieces ever written. The music in this collection is full of stories. A misty sea voyage off the coast of Scotland (The Hebrides, by Mendelssohn); a dazzling Russian coronation scene (The Great Gate of Kiev, by Mussorgsky); a young woman comforting her old father (O mio babbino caro, by Puccini); a dawn over Egypt (Morning Mood, by Grieg) as well as a display of the Egyptian empire in all its glory (Triumphal March, by Verdi) and all its brutality (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, also by Verdi). Great music transcends place and time. Sibelius wrote Finlandia to marking his country’s new independence, Elgar was celebrating the high noon of the British Empire in his first Pomp and Circumstance March, Holst had astrologies in mind when he peered into his crystal ball and composed Mars (The Planets) and Richard Strauss was depicting an ancient Persian philosopherking with the opening dawn of Also sprach Zarathustra. These places and people and philosophies can remain entirely foreign to us while the music reaches a place deep inside us, beyond thought and speech. All these and many other masterpieces can be enjoyed in superb modern recordings on this unique compilation.