A delectable – and ever popular – collection of sacred songs sung by four of the most famous female singers of our time. Includes the Bach/Gounod ‘Ave Maria’ and the Schubert ‘Ave Maria’, favourite soprano arias from Bach’s sacred works and inspiring movements from the sacred works of Bruckner, Stradella and Dvorak.
Has there ever been a more quicksilver version of the ‘Trout Quintet’? We doubt it! Ingrid Haebler’s effortless pianism and Artur Grumiaux’s airy playing are a match made in heaven. As is the combination of Jack Brymer and the Allegri Quartet in one of Mozart’s most sublime pieces, the Clarinet Quintet in A major.
As he explains in his liner notes for this CD, Lynn Harrell uses the voice as his point of departure for this collection of encores. They are largely reflective pieces with a bit of fun such as the unfairly forgotten Glazunov ‘Spanish Serenade’ thrown in for good measure. And this once popular disc now makes […]
A delectable release of some of Schubert’s most popular chamber works, including the two Piano Trios in the famed 1966 performances by the Beaux Arts Trio – the other-worldly ‘Notturno’ and the early one-movement B flat major Trio, written when the composer was 15. Coupled with these are the first appearances on CD of the […]
A simply gorgeous recording of the most popular Violin romances. The recording had long been deleted from the catalogue and is now reissued with the added ‘bonus’ of the Schubert Rondo.
Grumiaux was an inveterate chamber musician and together with his Grumiaux Trio as well as selected soloists, delivers sublime, unforced yet probing performances of works by Mozart and Schubert.
The Decca Ansermet Legacy on Eloquence continues to garner the highest plaudits from publications all around the world. And the latest batch presents the maestro’s recordings of four key Austro-German Romantics: Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann bringing together all of Ansermet’s Mendelssohn and Schubert recordings for Decca. Adopting clarity and muscularity over homogeneity, Ansermet’s Mendelssohn […]
The first of four 2-CD ‘Flagstad Recitals’ features Kirsten Flagstad in Brahms and Schubert on CD1 as well as CD premieres of songs by Schumann (including her previously unpublished ‘Zum Schluss’), Strauss, Wolf and Sinding on CD2. Her great power and control placed her among those with the natural capacity for success in the ‘big’ […]
Jorge Bolet was an avowed Romantic, happy to relax once the serious business of his recital was over. Like Moiseiwitsch, he could be mischievously enterprising, challenging his audience to guess the composer of this or that rare poetic jewel or confection or, like Rubinstein, he could affectionately confirm and recreate their favourites. With delightful old […]
Schubert and Jorge Bolet may seem rare bedfellows for a virtuoso who excelled in the music of Liszt and Rachmaninov and whose lineage extended, through his teacher David Saperton, to Leopold Godowsky (Saperton’s teacher). But he finds in this music both muscularity and strength and his grasp of the music’s visionary and often extensive and […]
‘When he is at his best he plays more beautifully than any of us,’ Alfred Brendel told William Steinberg and described Kempff as ‘an Aeolian harp, ever ready to respond to whatever interesting wind blew his way’. Brendel chose Kempff’s 1953 Decca recording of Schubert’s A minor Sonata, D.845, for inclusion in Philips’ monumental ‘Great […]
This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. This collection brings together three of the most enduring chamber music masterpieces ever written. Mendelssohn’s Octet remains an […]
