Maybe music critics think Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic recording are the absolute best.

FORBES: Apple Loop: Investor Says Show Us The Money, The Case For An iPhablet, iWatch, Classical Music Picks

Karajan's final concert and recording, made that same month, was with his other orchestra: the Vienna Philharmonic.

NPR: Herbert von Karajan's Symphonic Obsessions

Is quantity driving out quality as critics, including the Vienna Philharmonic, believe?

ECONOMIST: Athens beats Sparta by an ear

The BBC's Kerry Skyring in Vienna says that - like Austria itself - the Vienna Philharmonic has been slow to get to grips with its past during World War II.

BBC: Vienna Philharmonic's Nazi past detailed

The Vienna Philharmonic gave its first note-perfect performance under Mr Kaplan's baton and he experienced his deepest satisfaction when the horn section, struggling in a recording session to accommodate the changes, played one passage 11 times in their earnestness to get it right.

ECONOMIST: Gilbert Kaplan

This time they packed off for Vienna, where two hastily assembled orchestras, the Vienna Film Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony (the opera label for the Vienna Philharmonic, which also appears by name in the file) stood at the ready, pending resolution of legal issues.

NPR: 'Hitchcock's Music' Scores Big on Suspense

Before Welser-Moest became a conductor, he worked as a trained violinist with some of the most respected orchestras around the world, including the philharmonic orchestras of Vienna and Berlin, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and the Orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles and New York.

BBC: Vienna opera director collapses during performance

Asked if they would move, two members of St Petersburg Philharmonic speak respectfully of Vienna, Cleveland, Philadelphia, but they say no.

ECONOMIST: Russian violinists

During his career, Sawallisch also conducted at the Bayreuth Festival, La Scala in Milan and with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and Tokyo's NHK Orchestra.

BBC: Conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch dies at 89