Friedrich Gulda has become something of a cult figure in the music world. This 2CD set presents him in Mozart recordings – both concertos and solo works – largely for Decca, with one item, the Piano Concerto No. 17, recorded for Amadeo. Born in Vienna in 1930, Gulda began formal lessons aged seven with Felix […]

Kenneth Alwyn was a principal conductor of the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden where he shared the rostrum with such luminaries working with the company at that time as Malcolm Sargent, Ernest Ansermet, Arthur Bliss, William Walton, Hans Werner Henze and Benjamin Britten. The latter nominated him as conductor of the original production of The […]

One of the hidden gems of the Decca catalogue is this 1963 recording of nearly an hour of highlights from Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’ conducted by Sir Edward Downes with a model cast of soloists, including Fernando Corena as the Knight and Regina Resnik in one of her signature roles, Alice Ford. What makes the recording even more […]

This 1957 traversal of ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ marked the start of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s second cycle of the major Savoy Operas for Decca. It followed just eight years after the previous version but the improvements in sound quality – in stereo for the first time and wonderfully vivid – and performance values […]

On this reissue, Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular Piano Concerto No. 1 is coupled with a relative rarity – the Concert Fantasy. Peter Katin was not the first pianist to make a studio recording of Tchaikovksy’s Concert Fantasy – that honour went to Tatiana Nikolayeva in 1950 – but his 1958 recording with Sir Adrian Boult was the […]

Bursting onto the scene with a sensational two-year run at the Savoy Theatre (672 performances commencing on 14 March 1885), it was not long before ‘The Mikado’ was playing around the world in myriad different productions and translations – and it continues to be greeted with unparalleled global enthusiasm today. This October 1957 recording of […]