A trumpet and organ spectacular: three original Argo and DG albums on a generous, newly compiled 2-CD set. In Baroque works generally, the trumpet is always accompanied by drums both of these instruments having strong associations with military music. The organ, on the other hand, is primarily associated with the church and it is within […]

A pioneering Handel recording of the 1950s in a new digital remastering, released on Decca CD for the first time. The scholar and conductor, Anthony Lewis, was one of the early luminaries of the L’Oiseau Lyre label which became, over time, the early-music imprint of Decca. Drawing on his experience of conducting and staging Baroque […]

To complement a 2CD set of Rossini and Spanish songs entitled ‘Brava Berganza’ (482 6397), Eloquence has also reissued more buried treasure from the Decca discography of Teresa Berganza. The compilation takes its title from a 1961 album made, like the Rossini arias on ‘Brava Berganza’ with Sir Alexander Gibson conducting the orchestra of the […]

The works on this collection are drawn from two of the very first stereo LPs released by L’Oiseau-Lyre, the sub-label of Decca. ‘Music of Handel’ was a 1958 album containing arias (recently reissued by Eloquence 482 4759) and this instrumental suite from ‘Rodrigo’, one of the composer’s early pre-London Italian operas, performed in Florence in […]

One of the most significant violinists in gramophone history, Alfredo Campoli enjoyed tremendous success in the 1930s as a purveyor of light music both in concerts with his own salon orchestra and on Decca. A series of six 2CD reissues from Eloquence focuses on the violinist’s postwar reinvention of himself as ‘Campoli’, the classical soloist. […]

From 1962 (when he made his Royal Festival Hall debut) to 1967 and again from 1981 to 1987, Simon Preston held posts at Westminster Abbey, initially as sub-organist then as organist and master of the choristers. These recordings were made during that first period: signing off the compilation in style, Widor’s ‘Toccata’ was in fact […]

This unique collection, newly remastered from original Philips recordings, documents the work of Dutch conductor, Eduard van Beinum, in Baroque and Rococo repertoire. Thanks to his celebrated recordings of Romantic composers – many of them reissued on previous Eloquence releases – such as Berlioz (482 5569), Brahms (442 9788) and Bruckner (480 7068), the conductor […]

A newly compiled anthology of Decca recordings on Eloquence, surveys the healthy state of Handel singing in England in the 1960s, before this music became the preserve of musicians and singers within the period-instrument movement. This generous (145-minute) collection is based around a pair of newly re-mastered recital albums made by the contralto, Bernadette Greevy […]

When Pilar Lorengar died, a little over 20 years ago, at the age of 68 in her adopted city of Berlin, the tributes were unanimous for ‘one of the most beautiful voices heard in the post-war era’ (The Independent). She had grown up in Zaragoza and always treasured her introduction to the musical stage, practically […]

Is nothing sacred? The Cambridge Buskers bring their madcap humour to the greats of classical music – everything from the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ and the ‘1812 Overture’ to Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ and the ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’! And not forgetting Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies in under four minutes… This 4CD set brings together the pair’s most famous albums, released […]

‘From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record’ is the first-ever comprehensive survey of the recordings of Australia’s greatest singers – in a unique, new, 4CD set from Decca, complete with biographies of each of the 80 artists, rare photographs, all contained within a 68-page booklet. Why has there been such an extraordinary procession of […]

Celebrated for her glorious traversals of 19th and 20th-century Spanish piano repertoire, on this recording Alicia de Larrocha harks back to the Baroque, offering a selection of sonatas by Scarlatti as well as the much lesser-known ones of his contemporary (and her compatriot) Soler. Sandwiched between, is her recording of the fifth of Handel’s keyboard suites […]