A debut on CD for the American Decca legacy of Ruth Slenczynska, a prodigious Romantic-age keyboard lioness. The biography for her Wigmore Hall recital in March 1957 claimed that the 32-year-old Ruth Slenczynska had given 1600 concerts. Scarcely believably, perhaps, but no less so than other elements of her extraordinary life story – making her […]

Is nothing sacred? The Cambridge Buskers bring their madcap humour to the greats of classical music – everything from the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ and the ‘1812 Overture’ to Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ and the ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’! And not forgetting Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies in under four minutes… This 4CD set brings together the pair’s most famous albums, released […]

Celebrated for her glorious traversals of 19th and 20th-century Spanish piano repertoire, on this recording Alicia de Larrocha harks back to the Baroque, offering a selection of sonatas by Scarlatti as well as the much lesser-known ones of his contemporary (and her compatriot) Soler. Sandwiched between, is her recording of the fifth of Handel’s keyboard suites […]

The world’s foremost exponent of the guitar, John Williams, is featured here in some of his earliest recordings, where he strums effortlessly, Suites by Bach, a tiny Gavotte by Scarlatti (senior) and a transcription of a keyboard sonata by Scarlatti (junior).

George Malcolm, who died in 1997, irreverently called the harpsichord the ‘jangle box’, yet he was a master of that instrument and of several other musical domains as well. Of Scottish ancestry, he was born in London in 1917 and when he was just seven he was admitted to the Royal College of Music. He […]