Between 1965 and 1968, Seiji Ozawa and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra made a series of remarkable albums for RCA. Collected here for the first time in a single box of 6 CDs, they represent an early high-point perhaps unsurpassed in the Japanese maestros long and distinguished recording career. Featured among these dynamic Ozawa/Chicago performances are three cornerstones of the symphonic repertoire: the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphonies and the Schubert Unfinished, all remastered from the original analogue tapes for this edition. The very first album in the collaboration, however, is a pairing of Bartóks First and Third Piano Concertos, with the 18-year-old Peter Serkin as soloist, released on LP in December 1966 and also remastered for this set. A couple of years later, Serkin, Ozawa and the CSO made a benchmark recording of another important 20th-century piano concerto, the Schoenberg, also reissued here in remastered sound and in its original coupling with further Schoenberg piano solo works.
