When Arthur Rubinstein first heard the fifteen-year-old Gilels perform in Odessa, he exclaimed ‘By God, I can’t describe it. If he comes to America, I might as well pack my bags and leave!’ ‘Serious without solemnity, profound without pomp, he was a citizen of the world,’ wrote Jeremy Siepmann of Gilels. ‘Like music itself, his […]
While the bulk of Ansermet’s recordings were made with L’Orchestre de la Susise Romande, there were a few with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra and the very occasional foray into recordings with London orchestras. One of these was with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1959 with producer Michael Williamson and engineer Kenneth […]
From Decca’s rich catalogue of piano music comes a generous selection of miniatures for piano, many of them quiet, all of them popular and much sought-after, in the finest of performances, of course.
The consummate aristocrat with a huge technique at his diposal, Magaloff despatches stylish and glittering performances of the complete Chopin Waltzes.
The best of Chopin’s solo piano works – selections from his Polonaises, Waltzes, Mazurkas, Ballades, Preludes – in performances that have been praised time and again over the years from such celebrities as Nikita Magaloff, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Joseph Cooper, Peter Katin and Julius Katchen.
From the poet of the piano, Frederic Chopin, comes a compilation of some of his most memorable moments – both for solo piano and for piano with orchestra. And for the musically curious there is a rarity as well – the ‘Krakowiak’ with one-time Sydney-based conductor, Willem van Otterloo, conducting the Hague Resident Orchestra with […]
Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And the seventh volume, Reflections in the Water, is the ultimate tranquility! Water is a force of nature that inspired composers to some of their most languid compositions, from the Baroque (Handel’s Water Music written for a royal party held on a barge) to Impressionistic (the aqueous ripples and shimmer […]
Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And the first volume, Music for Relaxation, offers a miscellany of classical pieces from piano (the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata) to orchestral music by Grieg, Elgar and Borodin.
Chopin raised the pedagogic ‘study’ (étude) to entirely new levels with his Opp. 10 and 25. Virtuoso studies, testing the technique of any pianist, they are also incredibly poetic works. Here they are unforgettably played by Nikita Magaloff. The ‘Trois Nouvelles Études’, three tiny gems that were posthumously published, complete this oeuvre.
Chopin was not a composer synonymous with Jorge Bolet and yet Bolet’s huge technique and limpid tone were totally suited to the long lines of poetry that Chopin wove, as this recording of both miniatures (the 24 Préludes) as well as the larger-scale works (Ballades, Fantasie) demonstrates.
The Swedish-Russian soprano, Elisabeth Söderström, made several landmark recordings for Decca – operas by Janacek, the complete songs of Rachmaninov and Sibelius both of which were recorded with Vladimir Ashkenazy. With Ashkenazy too she recorded songs by Chopin and her lyric/dramatic soprano fully captures the range of these songs, from tenderness to pathos. Ashkenazy is […]
When Vladimir Horowitz died in 1989, many music-lovers bemoaned the passing of ‘the last Romantic’ – an allusion to a bigger-than-life and subjective brand of pianism more typical of the first part of the 20th century than of its close. But was Horowitz really ‘the last’? When Jorge Bolet died a year later, the phrase […]
