Sony Lorin Maazel Conducts The Cleveland Orchestra

When he was called to succeed George Szell as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1972, the 42-year-old American conductor was hardly known in his home country. But over the next ten years, as the recordings collected for the first time in Sony Classical's new 15-CD box set amply demonstrate, this enigmatic genius by the name of Lorin Maazel burnished the Cleveland image and maintained the exalted standards set by Szell, who had elevated his ensemble to pre-eminence among the US 'Big Five' orchestras. The new set brings a curiosity, Lorin Maazel's own 'symphonic realizations' of chansons by the French pop star Serge Lama. After accompanying the singer-songwriter on the violin on a French TV show, he hatched the idea of 'lending Lama's poetry a new, larger dimension'. This is the 1980 album's first international release, as well as its CD début.