Karel Ancerl’s recording of Dvorak’s scintillating ‘Slavonic Dances’, here receive their first release on CD. Recorded in 1958, they were some of the most popular LP recordings in their day and now receive their first exhumation on CD. The coupling is a rarity but no less beautiful – Dvorak’s three ‘Slavonic Rhapsodies’, in wonderfully glowing […]

Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony bring a fantastic array of colour as well as subtlety to these marvellous Rhapsodies. With an array of countries represented – the Rhapsodies largely paying tribute to indigenous music – the cover illustration highlights these associations.

Two of Dvorák’s sunniest inspirations on CD together. The rare recording of the Violin Concerto with German violinist Edith Peinemann is once more made available and Kubelík’s recording of the Serenade was always one of the most highly recommended.

A thrilling collection of Overtures and Preludes (with some popular orchestral pieces thrown in for good measure) from Zubin Mehta. As a showman of the best variety, his recordings remain one of the Decca catalogue’s richest legacies with more than half of this collection released on CD for the first time.

This coupling presents Heinrich Schiff and Colin Davis’s mellow reading of Dvorák’s Cello Concerto, recorded in 1980, with Dorati’s earlier 1959 Concertgebouw traversal of the ‘New World’ Symphony – a veritable fire and brimstone reading of this popular work. Both works were recorded in the fabled Concertgebouw’s main hall.

In 1960, the Stuttgart-born conductor Karl Münchinger (1915-1990), made a Decca recording of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon and Gigue’ that assured the piece its immortality in years to come. Münchinger recorded extensively for Decca with his Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra). Moderate-size forces, rhythmic sprightliness and judicious ornamentation were the hallmarks of his recordings of 17th and 18th-century […]

A double-CD of Romantic Violin Concertos celebrating the art of Ruggiero Ricci, this set includes the first international release on CD of the Ricci/Boult 1952 recording of the Beethoven. Boult characterised it as ‘perhaps the most thoughtful concerto, the one which needs for the violinist to be a great man as well as a great […]

Legendary cellist, Pierre Fournier’s stereo recording of the Dvořák Cello Concerto is well known but his earlier recording from July 1954 for Decca is largely forgotten. It’s revived in this Kubelik-led anthology also bringing back to the catalogue the conductor’s mono version of the Janáček Sinfonietta and his electrifying account of Tchaikovsky’s love poem ‘Romeo […]

This recording forms part of a series of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Five titles were released in September and the remaining five are released this month. The Vienna […]

Two beloved Romantic orchestral works in stellar performances, return to the catalogue in beautiful transfers. Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), often bemoaned the fact that he was associated with the French and Russian repertoires to the exclusion of music from outside of those traditions. He could hardly help it; after all, it was Monteux who conducted the […]

Dvořák naturally gave a great deal of attention to the genre of the oratorio and it was his work in this area that firmly established his reputation in the English-speaking world. Rossini very much admired Pergolesi’s fine setting of the Stabat Mater but had not felt equal to attempting his own. The decision to try […]

István Kertész made one of the first stereo cycles of Dvorák’s symphonies on Decca with the London Symphony Orchestra. Earlier still, in 1961, he recorded just the Ninth (‘From the New World’), with the Vienna Philharmonic – one of the tautest, most thrilling performances ever committed to disc. It is coupled here with a recording […]