Three L’Oiseau-Lyre LPs celebrating the art of a much-loved contralto, newly remastered and compiled together for the first time, including material new to CD. The history of British contraltos on record, extends beyond Kathleen Ferrier to Constance Shacklock and before her Dame Clara Butt but their select number was joined in the 1950s by Helen […]

A trumpet and organ spectacular: three original Argo and DG albums on a generous, newly compiled 2-CD set. In Baroque works generally, the trumpet is always accompanied by drums both of these instruments having strong associations with military music. The organ, on the other hand, is primarily associated with the church and it is within […]

The works on this collection are drawn from two of the very first stereo LPs released by L’Oiseau-Lyre, the sub-label of Decca. ‘Music of Handel’ was a 1958 album containing arias (recently reissued by Eloquence 482 4759) and this instrumental suite from ‘Rodrigo’, one of the composer’s early pre-London Italian operas, performed in Florence in […]

A pair of L’Oiseau-Lyre albums reissued together, including several items making their first appearance on Decca CD. The soprano, Jennifer Vyvyan, was taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London by Roy Henderson, coach of Kathleen Ferrier. With Henderson’s help she formed a secure technique and quickly won acclaim for both operatic and oratorio […]

These delightful Cantatas have very familiar tunes that Handel was later to reuse in other works, so many of them are instantly recognisable. They also elicit some of the most visceral singing imaginable from Helen Watts.