Issued complete for the first time, including several albums new to CD, is the Philips catalogue of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble – an ensemble that made a defining contribution to Dutch musical life in the 1970s. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble began life in 1959 as a wind quintet, but soon expanded to play Classical-era serenades […]

Sutherland’s sensational debut recital album, long unavailable on its own, reissued with photographs and rarely seen costume designs for the soprano’s signature roles. When these recordings first appeared, Joan Sutherland was on the brink of a spectacular international career; just behind her was the sensation of her Royal Opera debut in Lucia di Lammermoor, early […]

From Adam to Zandonai, from 1954 to 1996, 20 CDs made up of no less than 28 Decca opera recordings, most of them recorded as highlights albums, many long unavailable, newly remastered and all featuring the greatest singers of their age. In bygone years, before 24/7 streaming, recorded music was less readily available than it […]

Dame Joan Sutherland’s personal selection of her favourite recordings, with her own liner notes. Tributes from Moffatt Oxenbould and Fiona Janes, previously unpublished photographs, a series of costume designs for her key operatic roles, and illustrations of all the original jackets from which the selection was made. Plus her recipe for Christmas Pudding, all issued […]

‘In every way the most transcendentally gifted young piano student I have heard in the last 25 years’ was Percy Grainger’s pronouncement of the young Eileen Joyce (1908–1991) when he first heard her play in 1926. From the goldfields in Western Australia whose capital city is the most remote in the world, Joyce defied incongruous and […]

The farewell performance of Dame Nellie Melba, world-famous prima donna of her day, on the stage of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where she had sung hundreds of times over an unprecedented span of 40 years, remains a justly famous occasion, of which recorded extracts have been reissued previously. What makes the present release […]

Unlikely in theory, fruitful in practice: for the first time on CD, Eloquence presents a duet recording of the Greek-born, French mezzo-soprano, Irma Kolassi and French-Canadian tenor, Raoul Jobin. Kolassi was no creature of the stage: her brief recording career centres around Decca recital albums which have also been newly remastered and reissued by Eloquence […]

‘From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record’ is the first-ever comprehensive survey of the recordings of Australia’s greatest singers – in a unique, new, 4CD set from Decca, complete with biographies of each of the 80 artists, rare photographs, all contained within a 68-page booklet. Why has there been such an extraordinary procession of […]

Beginning in 1961, Georg Solti enjoyed a ten-year tenure as Music Director of London’s Covent Garden Opera Company where he raised performance standards while giving British singers more prominence than ever before. These changes were not lost on Buckingham Palace and in 1968, Covent Garden earned the right to be renamed ‘The Royal Opera’. With […]

Issued in the US under the title ‘Witches’ Brew’, Alexander Gibson and the New Symphony Orchestra of London recorded this album in 1959 and the performances remain today as characterful and incisive as they were then. While pieces from this recording have previously appeared on Decca, this is its first complete release on the label. […]

For their 1989 festival, the committee of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir invited Dame Kiri Te Kanawa to join the Choir and the Utah Symphony Orchestra under maestro Julius Rudel. The choice of repertoire remained open and Dame Kiri selected a highly appropriate program of inspirational works that she could share with the choir and its […]

Ballet hybrids often eclipse the originals from which they are drawn and such is the case with the music on this disc. Including such popular pieces as the ‘Can Can’ from Orpheus in the Underworld and the ‘Barcarolle’ from The Tales of Hoffman, there is possibly no better recording on the market than Solti’s Gaite […]