Legendary since its ‘Phase 4’ Decca release, Dorati and his team bring to this recording all the swagger, colour and panache the work deserves. A thrilling performance!

The ‘Stabat Mater’ was one of those works which served to promote Haydn’s reputation in the rest of Europe, for a successful performance in Paris in April 1781 was followed by a lengthy and highly complimentary article in ‘Le Mercure de France’, publication of the full score in London (1783) and Paris (1785) and a […]

Appearing on CD for the first time, Lamberto Gardelli’s Pizzetti recording has been one of the most venerated in the Decca catalogue, not only because the music is comparatively rare but because the recording is true state-of-the-art. The music has Gallic charm and a Stravinskian sense of razor-sharp wit, not to mention a fascinating storyline […]

Long out of the catalogue, Marriner’s (Philips) recording of Bach’s B Minor Mass, with an array of splendid soloists, returns to circulation. Its coupling is the first release on CD of this recording of the deeply moving Cantata BWV 56 ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen’. It was one of two (extant) Bach cantatas for […]

‘Jephtha’ was the last full-length composition that Handel wrote. (‘The Triumph of Time and Truth’ of 1757 was almost entirely made up of pre-existing music.) Given this fact and also that the actual writing of it was an inordinately laborious task for Handel as he fought with rapidly failing eyesight, its incomparable depth of expression […]

Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók were Hungary’s two most important composers in the 20th century. They were both friends and colleagues, working separately and together to document and preserve folk music from Hungary and its surrounding regions. The music they collected strongly influenced their own compositions. Decca was one of the first major record companies […]