A gallery of Mozart performances from the mid-1950s, including many forgotten and newly remastered recordings. Deutsche Grammophon marked the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 1956 with a 6LP ‘Jubilee Edition’. Three ‘evenings’ of orchestral, chamber and vocal music drew on DG’s most experienced and dynamic Mozartians, from Ferenc Fricsay and Clara Haskil to Maria […]
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, […]
Dating from May 1956, this recording of the ‘Posthorn’ Serenade was made in what became the Indian Summer of Eduard van Beinum’s recorded legacy with the Concertgebouw. The orchestra was on song and entirely at one with their music director in this chamber-music repertoire as may already be heard in the Bach suites recorded the […]
This highly appealing collection of light-orchestral classics, gathers up eighteen years in the history of one of the world’s most celebrated orchestras during the golden age of the LP. Ever since its foundation in 1883, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam has been blessed with a hall that to all intents and purposes, belongs to them. […]
Beginning with two rascally characters, the deluded Don Quixote and the prankster Till Eulenspiegel, this set includes remarkable recordings from the catalogues of Philips and Deutsche Grammophon with some recordings appearing on CD internationally for the first time – Haitink’s ‘Don Quixote’, Jochum’s blazing ‘Till Eulenspiegel’, shimmering Rosenkavalier Waltzes (both sets) and Munchinger’s recording of […]
Among the many Sibelius recordings in existence, those that have certainly been overlooked are the Okko Kamu readings of the Four Legends, Karelia Suite and two of the tone poems – The Bard and En Saga. Previously issued on a French ‘Double’ disc, they make their first significant appearance, coupled with the much-praised Sibelius readings […]
Looking back at ‘Tristan und Isolde’ twenty years after its composition, Wagner told his wife Cosima: ‘My model was Romeo and Juliet – nothing but duets!’ He was invoking Bellini’s opera,’I Capuleti e i Montecchi’ which he had conducted many times as a young man. Indeed, there had been much in the Italian master’s legacy that […]
‘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’ […]
