Fritz Reiner was one of the foremost conductors of his time. Crowning his long career in Europe and America was the decade from 1954 to 1963 as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra an illustrious partnership that ranks along such other historical tenures as Karajan's in Berlin, Szell's in Cleveland and Bernstein's in New York. Luckily for posterity, Reiner's legendary interpretations at the helm of the Chicago Symphony which no less than Igor Stravinsky called "the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world" were captured on record by RCA Victor. Now for the first time ever, they are being issued together in a single Sony Classical box set of 63 re-mastered CDs. A champion of 20th-century music, he could also give incomparably lilting performances of Strauss waltzes. In both Pittsburgh and Chicago, Reiner recorded works by his former teacher Bart³k, and he was instrumental in convincing Serge Koussevitzky to commission Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra in 1943. His classic 1955 Chicago recording of that masterpiece is among the glories of this new set. Every recording in this new 63-CD set comes from the best re-mastered source. A third have been newly re-mastered from the original tapes. This Reiner/Chicago Symphony edition is destined to become a cornerstone of serious record collections around the world.