Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra - Sibelius Symphonies 1 & 4 (Limited edition) (2004) [SACD]

The CD is released on a limited club subscription, and has never been publicly sold. Therefore, there are no links to stores, etc.

Two symphonies from Sir Colin Davis’s second traversal of the Sibelius Symphonies for RCA (not the third cycle, on LSO Live SACD) now on SACD. Multichannel Only! This is part of a run of SACDs produced by BMG for distribution to club members in Germany, but never publicly sold. If you own any discs in this series, speak up!
All of the Edition 100 SACDs contain the following note – there is essentially nothing else of note in the packaging:
Das Super-Audio-CD-Format wurde entwickelt, um bestmögliche Klang-Qualität zu bieten. Das Ergebnis: Das beste derzeit technisch machbare Audio-Format. Es ermöglicht, Musik mit höchster Klangtreue wiederzugeben. Unter Verwendung eines Mehrkanal-Wiedergabegerätes erleben Sie sogar den Raumeindruck eines Konzertsaales in den eigenen vier Wänden. Das Klangerlebnis wird so zum vollendeten Hörgenuss.
Diese Edition 100-Hybrid Disc erlaubt eine Wiedergabe in allen herkömmlichen CD-Playern.
Review of the RBCD Cycle from Amazon
This is Davis’ second Sibelius cycle, and he redid it yet again on the LSO Live label. This cycle (and I’ve heard a lot of them) easily stands with the best – riveting performances, great recorded sound, led by a mature Sibelius aficionado who had been working on probing the depths of this music for decades since his first cycle with the Boston SO. I’m not saying this is necessarily better than that (also) 5-star cycle, but the increase in maturity and depth-of-thought are apparent. The 7th symphony (my favorite) is superb.
The recorded sound is better too. There might be some aural trickery going on here – the sound is so clear that is might not sound as “powerful” as the first set, but trust me, the power is there. But first set has freshness that is hard to beat, but hopefully I am giving you the parameters by which to judge – you won’t go wrong with either cycle. Haven’t heard enough of his later LSO live cycle, but I can tell you the 7th symphony is quite excellent.