April 5, 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Herbert von Karajan, the legendary Austrian-born conductor who achieved a position of musical supremacy as director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra that made him one of the most famous and celebrated conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. While the majority of his symphonic recordings were made for Deutsche Grammophon, von Karajan also recorded for Decca during the 1950s and 1960s. This set is reissued to mark this momentous anniversary and contains all of his orchestral recordings made with the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca during the late 1950s/early 1960s. One of the most celebrated of these is Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra--a recording heard by countless people around the globe as the opening was used on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Karajan's other Decca recordings include some of the finest studio recordings of a number of operas, recordings which have remained an integral part of the Decca catalogue since they were first released during the 1960s/ 1970s. These include: Tosca (Leontyne Price); Die Fledermaus (Gueden/Wächter)--which has the celebrated "gala sequence" in Act 2; Aida (Tebaldi/Simionato/Bergonzi); Otello (Del Monaco/Tebaldi); La Bohème (Pavarotti/Freni); and Madama Butterfly (Pavarotti/Freni).
