Highlights from Solti’s thrilling reading of Aida, recorded in July 1961. With four of the leading Verdi singers of the 1960s and plenty of Soltian fire in the belly, this disc of highlights includes more than 71 minutes of music, featuring all the great arias and scenes – ‘Celeste Aida’, the ‘Triumphal March’ and the final […]
Possibly the most thrilling, sexually-charged ‘Walküre’ ever recorded, this CD features the sappy voices of Gré Brouwenstijn and Jon Vickers as Sieglinde and Siegmund coupled with two of the leading Wagnerians of their day – Nilsson and London – as Brünnhilde and Wotan. Also listen out for the wind machine introduced in the Prelude to Act […]
Herbert von Karajan’s mighty ‘Ring’ cycle, here represented through extended highlights allows us to sample Karajan’s choice of different singers for the same character in different operas – Fischer-Dieskau’s Wotan in ‘Das Rheingold’ and Thomas Stewart’s in ‘Siegfried’. There are notes on the music as well as an essay by Karajan expert, Richard Osborne, on […]
This is a 50-year retrospective (1950–2000) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring twelve extracts from eight operas (including all four operas of the ‘Ring’ cycle) with nine great singers. Wagner’s knowledge of heroes derived from two sources: the myths of ancient Greece and the sagas and poetry of northern Europe. In both […]
Looking back at ‘Tristan und Isolde’ twenty years after its composition, Wagner told his wife Cosima: ‘My model was Romeo and Juliet – nothing but duets!’ He was invoking Bellini’s opera,’I Capuleti e i Montecchi’ which he had conducted many times as a young man. Indeed, there had been much in the Italian master’s legacy that […]
Monteux’s Beethoven has been described as visionary. Respect for the spirit of the score, directness of expression, exceptionally well-drilled playing and a sense of untainted idealism that lay at the very heart of the composer’s vision – these are the qualities that typify Monteux’s interpretation of Beethoven. Eight of the symphonies were recorded for Decca; […]
