International Record Review celebrates its half-birthday with probably our
best issue yet.  IRR is already well known to be heavily reviews-dominated
but the August issue beats all previous records with over 250 CD reviews!

Placido Domingo is featured on the cover.  Patrick O'Connor reviews the
special set which celebrates his 30 years with EMI.

Robert Layton offers a recorded survey of Sibelius' Third symphony, whilst
Graham Simpson discusses Gergiev's Prokofiev Semyon Kotko in an extended
feature review.

For the first time local Japanese releases - a fascinating area for
collectors - are covered.  Look out for a review of the superb re-mastering
of the Kondrashin Shostakovich symphony cycle from BMG Japan.  At last the
Fourth symphony appears - for the first time - on CD in stereo.

We would encourage our readers to write to our letters page
[log in to unmask] with thoughts, disagreements, updates, opinions
etc.  We intend to expand the space given over to correspondents.

If you haven't seen International Record Review yet please don't hesitate
to contact me by e-mail for more information.

regards to all

Simon Foster,
International Record Review