Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium

For those music lovers who’ve not found quite the motherload of new CDs in the post-Christmas sale, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (recently declared the best band on the planet by the Gramophone) are offering the world a nice little holiday present. It’s part of the orchestra’s celebrations of its 120^th Anniversary, but you can still call it Christmas for collectors…

Between now and the end of the year, you can download ten symphonies from the AVRO/Radio 4 website.

These FREE downloads include

Beethoven – Symphony No. 2 (Jansons, 2004)
Brahms – Symphony No. 2 (Jansons, 2004)
Bruckner – Symphony No. 8 (Haitink, 2005)
Dvořák – Symphony No. 8 (Giulini, 1990)
Franck – Symphony in D minor (Jansons, 2004)
Mahler – Symphony No. 1 (Bernstein, 1987)
Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 4 (Kondrashin, 1979)
Saint-Saëns – Symphony No. 3 (Chung, 2005)
Schubert – Symphony No. 8 (Harnoncourt, 1997)
Sibelius – Symphony No. 2 (Jansons, 2005There is a simple registration procedure before you can start downloading.

Most importantly, however, these downloads go away on New Year’s Eve.