Posts tagged as "gustave-charpentier"

Sound the Trumpets

March 12, 2019

A trumpet and organ spectacular: three original Argo and DG albums on a generous, newly compiled 2-CD set. In Baroque works generally, the trumpet is always accompanied by drums both of these instruments having strong associations with military music. The organ, on the other hand, is primarily associated with the church and it is within […]

Christmas at Westminster Abbey

October 13, 2017

At the age of 22, in 1963 when he became sub-Organist of Westminster Abbey, Simon Preston was already the anointed Crown Prince of the King of Instruments. The reputation of his virtuosity and stylish response to a repertoire of five centuries had spread far before him. Having left the Abbey in 1967, he then returned […]

From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record

October 18, 2016

‘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 […]

Rameau, Charpentier, Grétry: Ballet Music and Suites

April 22, 2016

A generous disc (nearly 80 minutes) of some of Raymond Leppard’s pioneering L’Oiseau-Lyre recordings of French Baroque music with the English Chamber Orchestra. The brilliant realisations of Rameau’s ‘Temple de la Gloire’ suites have seldom been more strikingly realised. ‘Le Temple de la Gloire’ was a theatrical entertainment to a text by Voltaire, written to […]

Fête à la Française

April 20, 2016

The recorded legacy of Albert Wolff is one of the most sought-after by collectors. Of Dutch parentage, but born in Paris, Wolff was something of a polymath: pianist, organist, conductor, composer, and had a long career in recording studios beginning in 1920. His first recordings for Decca, starting in the summer of 1951, were a […]

Hilde Gueden sings Operetta

March 5, 2016

Several countries have their light operas: the British their Gilbert and Sullivan, the Spanish their zarzuelas, the French their operettes. All of these display quite tight-knit styles but the operetta tradition of Austria and specifically Vienna, is more diffuse, reflecting the differing styles of folk music found in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The world of […]