The A Z of String Players surveys the lives, careers and recordings of over 300 string players from the past and present. Many great string players who have made recordings are included, from Accardo to Zukerman. The text covers artists from the earliest recording processes to contemporary, cutting-edge technology. In this clear and straight-forward publication, the artists are listed alphabetically, with a summary of their career, notable recordings, biography and critical appraisal of their recorded legacy. In addition, four compact discs present a selection of recordings from 69 artists. This package will appeal to enthusiast and scholar alike as a readable, informed and fascinating work of reference.

Simon Rattle conducts violinist Leonidas Kavakos and the Berliner Philharmoniker in their annual Europa Konzert, recorded live at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest.

Pierre Boulez conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and pianist Daniel Barenboim in this opening concert from the Salzburg Festival of 2008. Featured works include Ravel's 'Valses nobles et sentimentales', Bartok's 'Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.1' and Stravinsky's 'Firebird Suite'.

n several of his writings on folk music Bela Bart6k recalls an incident I that happened to him in 1904 during a visit to a small village in Tran 1 syl vania. Quite by chance he heard there an eighteen-year-old Hun garian peasant girl singing Hungarian folk songs whose construction was 2 significantly different from the songs he had known until then. This experience appealed to his imagination far deeper than chance oc currences usually do. It sparked in him a creative fire that was there after to impart to his music certain characteristics that are recognizable today as indigenous to the Bart6kian style of composition. The inspirational value of the incident was rekindled by return trips to Transylvania. During these trips he was not merely listening. He began notating, melodies, building them into a coordinated collection. Soon Bart6k's itinerary took him into villages populated in checkered proximity by both Hungarians and Rumanians, thence into little communities where the population was exclusively Rumanian. There he discovered that their songs were much less, if at all, influenced by the urban civilization of Western Europe than those he had collected in Hungarian villages. In an interview he gave to a Transylvanian newspaper in 1922, Bart6k described the difference between the available Hungarian and Rumanian songs."