Among the legion of Decca recordings boasting the company’s fabled ‘Decca Sound’, one that has been overlooked is the late Sir Charles Mackerras’s recording of his own arrangements of ‘moments’ from the G&S canon under the title Pineapple Poll. Like Gaîte Parisienne and Le Beau Danube it is a ‘jukebox’ ballet, built on cleverly assembled medleys, […]

Beethoven broke new ground in exploring the potential of the symphony, both in terms of its subject matter and its qualities as descriptive music. The title of each movement of his sixth symphony, outlines what is being portrayed and in the case of the bird-calls at the end of the second movement, Beethoven made a […]

Two ‘Phase 4’ recordings reappear in their entirety on this double-CD of violin bon-bons. Josef Sakonov’s is of virtuoso violin pieces (including Sarasate’s ‘Zigeunerweisen’) and sentimental miniatures by Godard, Tchaikovsky, Ponce and others. This is the first international release of the complete original LP on CD. Erich Gruenberg’s recording centres around Fritz Kreisler – as […]

Borodin’s First Symphony was one of his earliest large-scale works and shows a great increase of technical skill over anything he had done before. Of course, it was a brave decision on Borodin’s part to undertake a symphony when he had little experience of large-scale form and none of orchestration. The influence of Schumann is […]

Most parents will assert that siblings do not always play well together but classical music gives many examples to the contrary. Although violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, was the most famous member of his family, he performed and made several recordings with his sisters, Hephzibah and Yaltah both pianists. (Pianist Marcel Ciampi who taught both sisters, remarked […]