‘Jansen is Pelléas,’ wrote Eduardo Arnosi in a love-letter to Roger Desormière’s still-unsurpassed first recording (Opera magazine, September 1999) and few would demur. There was, however, much more to Jacques Jansen than the refined ardour and spontaneity of this 1941 recording. Just over a decade later, Decca producer, John Culshaw, spent a day in Paris […]

The two Debussy sonatas date from late in the composer’s life and are wistful pieces though not without humour. The Ravel Violin Sonata is sleek, elegant and has a delightful jazzy movement while the Trio is a masterpiece, a tour de force of writing for these three instruments and a hugely enjoyable work. This early […]

The three 2CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.Ansermet’s recording of ‘The Nutcracker’ is in a league of its own, and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. Refined, yet passionate, many of the pieces on these recordings make their first international appearance […]

The Decca Ansermet Legacy on Eloquence continues to garner the highest plaudits from publications all around the world .And this batch presents the maestro’s recordings of four key Austro-German Romantics: Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann bringing together all of Ansermet’s Schumann recordings for Decca. Ansermet’s Schumann is generally unforced and relaxed with all but the Piano […]