Eugen Jochum’s complete recordings of choral / sacred music for Philips collected together for the first time. Includes the rare Rudolf Mengelberg Magnificat. Born into a Catholic family of Bavarian musicians, Eugen Jochum was playing the organ and conducting his father’s choir as a child. Late in life he became renowned as a Bruckner specialist, […]
Ernest Ansermet’s complete Decca recordings of Frank Martin. The Swiss conductor regarded his countryman, Frank Martin as one of the two great composers of his time. He rejected the atonal system of music as ‘without musical meaning’ and even, late in life, turned against Igor Stravinsky whom he had championed earlier in his career. In […]
The complete Decca-recorded legacy of an illustrious Mahlerian, newly remastered, with several recordings receiving their first international CD release on Decca. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra lays claim to the closest and longest relationship with the music of Mahler. It was a relationship nurtured by the friendship between the composer and the orchestra’s second music director, […]
The DECCA ANSERMET LEGACY has been systematically releasing the vast recorded legacy of Ernest Ansermet, a key Decca artist in the 1950s and 1960s. It has become one of the most sought-after and praised of all reissue series. The latest brings together Ansermet’s Honegger recordings, including the first international release on CD of the Symphony […]
The Eloquence/Ansermet journey continues with a much-anticipated and unique set: the early Stravinsky/Ansermet Decca discography with recordings made in the decade from 1946–1955, with, as a bonus, the hitherto unissued-on-CD recording of the Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss, recorded in 1962. The detailed booklet notes by Richard Kaplan are supplemented with full-page reproductions of many […]
This is a 50-year retrospective (1950–2000) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring twelve extracts from eight operas (including all four operas of the ‘Ring’ cycle) with nine great singers. Wagner’s knowledge of heroes derived from two sources: the myths of ancient Greece and the sagas and poetry of northern Europe. In both […]
‘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’ […]
In 1948, the young Hungarian conductor, Ferenc Fricsay (1914–1963) who had studied with Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, was invited to Berlin to become chief conductor of the RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) Symphonie Orchester and chief conductor of the Städtische Oper (today, the Deutsche Oper Berlin). The RIAS Symphonie Orchester changed its name […]
