Maazel’s colourful recordings of Debussy and Ravel for Decca have earned praise for their clear-sighted brand of Impressionism. To three of Debussy’s major orchestral works – La Mer, Nocturnes and Jeux – he adds the standalone section from Images (Iberia). The 2CD set represents the sum of Maazel’s Debussy and Ravel recordings for Decca.

Ion Voicu was a legend in his own country, Romania and in the profession at large and appeared in most major musical centres. Yet he was not as well known in the English-speaking countries as he should have been. The long cold war and the dictatorial regime in his native land were mainly to blame […]

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos’s 1965–66 recording of Spanish orchestral favourites was a huge success in its time, not only for the orchestra and conductor’s sense of colour, flamboyance and rhythmic acuity, but also for the sheer panoramic sound-spectrum with the fabled ‘Decca Sound’. Bringing together works both Spanish in origin as well as of Spanish […]

Pierre Monteux is the ideal interpreter of Ravel that great teaser and lover of mystification. Born less than a month apart in 1875, the two men were bound to come together in pre-war Paris which was such fertile ground for artistic novelty. The 1914-18 war scattered the main actors of Parisian musical life. Like Ravel, […]