Sony Classical are pleased to present a stunning new 10-CD boxset - the complete RCA Victor Recordings of The Boston Symphony Chamber Players, presented for the first time on CD.

It was inevitable that the Boston Symphony – hailed as “The Aristocrat of Orchestras” in the early ‘60s by RCA Victor, its long-time record company – would spin off an ensemble from its elite roster of principals. The Boston Symphony Chamber Players were duly launched in 1964 during the Austrian conductor Erich Leinsdorf’s music directorship. Starting that October, RCA Victor recorded them regularly in Symphony Hall until the orchestra changed labels at the end of the decade. By then, ten LPs of chamber music had been issued in four critically acclaimed releases. Sony Classical is now pleased to present all these recordings for the first time on CD.

The BSO’s ensemble of first-chair players is led here by its patrician concertmaster Joseph Silverstein, one of the finest American violinists of his generation as well as a highly regarded conductor and teacher. It also features such illustrious BSO principals as oboist Ralph Gomberg, flautist Doriot Anthony Dwyer, violist Burton Fine and cellist Jules Eskin, as well as two distinguished guest artists: Claude Frank and Richard Goode sharing honours in the works with piano.

RCA Victor recorded these outstanding musicians in a wide spectrum of repertoire, and each LP release represented a judicious balance of classical and modern works, both European and American. There are also further works by Mozart, Schubert and Brahms, as well as Hindemith, Poulenc, Milhaud, Martinů and Villa-Lobos. American music is generously represented by composers such as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Walter Piston and Irving Fine.

Also reissued from the original release, on a bonus disc with music examples from the performances in this collection, is Peter Ustinov in a conversation about chamber music with Erich Leinsdorf and Joseph Silverstein as well Ustinov’s own “urbane and witty survey” of the genre. The set also contains previously unreleased recordings of the Spohr Nonet and Samuel Barber’s Summer Music for wind quintet.

As High Fidelity wrote: “The pleasures set forth here by the Boston Symphony’s formidably accomplished first-chair players are not come by every day, and almost never in a collection of such range and variety … This collection clearly provides a satisfying and enlarging musical experience for anyone interested in ensemble music.”