Born in 1888, the Russian soprano, Oda Slobodskaya, won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Despite having no formal musical training, she travelled, at the age of eighteen, from her hometown of Vilno (then part of […]

‘When he is at his best he plays more beautifully than any of us’ wrote Alfred Brendel on the pianism of Wilhelm Kempff. Eloquence is proud to announce a mini-edition devoted to some of the rarer recordings of Wilhelm Kempff, born in 1895 at Jüterbog, the son of a church organist. By 1916, Kempff was […]

These recordings of the voices of Inge Borkh and Ljuba Welitsch are very fine examples of the art of the dramatic soprano from the 1950s and early 1960s. Borkh acquired a considerable reputation as Aida, Tosca, Turandot, and Medea in Cherubini’s opera of the same name, as well as Leonora in Fidelio. On this anthology, […]