Camille Saint-Saëns was only 21 years of age when he wrote his Mass Op. 4 but the craftsmanship of both its vocal and instrumental writing, testifies to the accomplishment of an experienced composer at a tender age: as a prodigious student at the Paris Conservatoire he was awarded a first prize in organ at just […]
Liszt’s Eine Faust-Symphonie, based on the Faust legend, is an hour-long work for tenor, choir and orchestra, based on the Faust legend. The Suisse Romande Orchestra take to this complex score, one with which they could hardly have been familiar, with clear enthusiasm and imbue the performance with alertness and vivacity. The woodwind playing of […]
‘The veteran Swiss conductor was a fine Brahms conductor’ wrote Gramophone magazine and as these recordings prove, he was indeed. The majority of these recordings make their first international debut on CD, following repeated requests by Ansermet fans around the world. Classically poised, yet Romantically generous in their spirit, they make a welcome appearance on […]
Bach’s music featured early in Ansermet’s career and he conducted the fourth Orchestral Suite in his last concert. Playing Bach in the 1960s was not quite the affair it is today but it would be false to assume that Ansermet’s Bach is the bloated, romanticised affair that was current in the 1960s. While his readings […]
Few more radiant expressions of choral singing exist than the opening of Poulenc’s Stabat Mater with Dutoit’s fine recording here restored to circulation and coupled with Lopez-Cobos conducting the energetic Gloria, also famous for its soprano solo. The coupling appears for the first time on CD: Bizet’s Te Deum, the original LP coupling for the […]
