One of Dame Joan Sutherland’s own favourite recordings, long unavailable on its own, reissued with additional material recorded at the Geneva sessions, with rarely seen photographs and a new booklet introduction. In her introduction to this reissue of Sutherland’s 1969 recording of Romantic French Arias, Fiona Janes notes that the album was made just shy […]

Igor Markevitch’s complete recordings for Philips, made between 1959 and 1968, including several recordings new to CD. Igor Markevitch made his debut on the Philips label in 1959 with a pair of symphonies by Haydn, conducting the Parisian Lamoureux Orchestra, whose fortunes he had begun to revive two years previously. He had embarked on a […]

From Adam to Zandonai, from 1954 to 1996, 20 CDs made up of no less than 28 Decca opera recordings, most of them recorded as highlights albums, many long unavailable, newly remastered and all featuring the greatest singers of their age. In bygone years, before 24/7 streaming, recorded music was less readily available than it […]

The inspirational French maestro on disc: an unrivalled retrospective, covering three decades of incandescent music-making, including recordings new to CD and long unavailable, newly remastered and comprehensively documented. In the memories of most record-buyers, Charles Munch was indelibly and almost exclusively associated with the RCA label, thanks to a string of spectacular albums made during […]

Ansermet’s invigorating and unsentimental way with Haydn has been documented on Eloquence with reissues of the Paris symphonies (480 1942) and the Symphonies Nos. 22 & 90 (480 0378). What Ansermet loved about Haydn above all was his ability to ‘express afresh every time, in so satisfying and charming a way, his moral health and optimism.’ […]

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 […]

James McCracken (1926–1988) recorded the arias on the first half of this disc in 1969, four years after the duets he recordeed with his wife, mezzo-soprano Sandra Warfield (1921-2009). Both singers were in their prime leon during those years and in the decade following. These performances of distinction offer some of the sappiest and most […]

‘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 […]

Ballet music was very much part of the great operas, sometimes inserted later for a bit of relief from the drama. Together with popular overtures – Rossini’s ‘Thieving Magpie’, Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ – this is a collection of some of those best-loved instrumental moments, some of which have even eclipsed the whole opera in popularity.

Opera has entrenched itself in popular consciousness thanks to the much publicised concerts of The Three Tenors, outdoor stagings of such operatic blockbusters as ‘Aida’ and ‘Turandot’, opera concerts in the park, not to mention their ready incorporation into television advertisements – be it a British Airways aircraft floating in the clouds to the ‘Lakme’ Flower […]

Two of Bizet’s most popular suites here directed with piquancy and spice by Igor Markevitch.

Few more radiant expressions of choral singing exist than the opening of Poulenc’s Stabat Mater with Dutoit’s fine recording here restored to circulation and coupled with Lopez-Cobos conducting the energetic Gloria, also famous for its soprano solo. The coupling appears for the first time on CD: Bizet’s Te Deum, the original LP coupling for the […]