The partnership of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is possibly the most recorded of all partnerships in recorded classical music. This collection brings together three of their earliest concerto recordings: ‘Baroque Trumpet Concertos, ‘Recital for Strings and ‘18th Century Flute Concertos’, the three LPs receiving their first complete release on CD. […]

Sir Adrian Boult made a selection of Decca recordings in the 1950s and 60s ranging from Baroque repertoire (Bach, Handel) to the music of the 20th century – most notably the first eight Vaughan Williams symphonies. Coupled together for the first time on CD are his two major Handel recordings  for Decca – of the […]

‘Jephtha’ was the last full-length composition that Handel wrote. (‘The Triumph of Time and Truth’ of 1757 was almost entirely made up of pre-existing music.) Given this fact and also that the actual writing of it was an inordinately laborious task for Handel as he fought with rapidly failing eyesight, its incomparable depth of expression […]

Throughout much of the first half of the previous century, entertainer Harry Lauder was, in the words of Winston Churchill, ‘Scotland’s greatest ever ambassador!’ In the following years, Scotland’s next ‘greatest ever ambassador’ (if not Sean Connery!) must have been Kenneth McKellar, who was born in 1927, the son of a grocer, in the Scottish […]

The potential of music as a means of adding dignity and grandeur to state occasions has surely been lost on a few rulers in history. Portraits of antique kings and queens are more often admired (or the reverse) for their artistic qualities, as opposed to the enhancement in the status of their subjects they were […]

‘Rodelinda’ stems from a period of great creativity in Handel’s life, 1724-25, following quickly on ‘Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano’ although it met with only moderate success. One of its first revivals was via the German Handel Society in the 1920s and then the Handel Opera Society revived it again, with a cast including Joan Sutherland, during […]

Arthur Fiedler took great pride in bringing classical music to the world at large. While Leonard Bernstein was busy with his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Fiedler and his Boston Pops Orchestra (most of the members drawn from the Boston Symphony) gave concerts of popular classics that became a fixture on America’s […]

Completed in 1719 and first performed in 1733, Handel’s opera seria Orlando is widely recognised as one of the eighteenth century’s greatest operas. One of the work’s most acclaimed recordings is that of Christopher Hogwood, with a stellar line-up of Baroque vocal specialists, including James Bowman, in the title role and Emma Kirkby and David Thomas. […]

More than 250 years of music celebrating the reign of the great British monarchs CD 1 – HANDEL: Coronation Anthems Handel’s four uplifting Coronation Anthems, including the epic Zadok the Priest with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and his beautiful Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, with its celestial invocation for trumpet and counter-tenor, ‘Eternal […]

‘If I were condemned to hear only one voice for the remainder of my life I think it might well be hers. If I wanted to be charmed, to laugh or cry I would find her the perfect companion. In her singing … we hear someone whose every utterance bespeaks natural sincerity and truthful feeling’ […]

It is difficult to dissociate the pure, warm tones of Renata Tebaldi’s voice from her usual operatic repertoire – the heroines of the Italian lyric stage of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which, thanks to her exceptional vocal and dramatic endowment, she interpreted so superbly. That these unforgettable portrayals were not just the product […]

Among the legendary opera singers of the post-war era was Lisa Della Casa, one of the few internationally known musical stars produced by the little country of Switzerland and a member of the exceptional Mozart ensemble built up by the Vienna State Opera. For opera-goers on both sides of the Atlantic, she was the first […]