Mozart was Josef Krips’s yardstick in music: ‘My maxim is that everything has to sound as though it were by Mozart, or it will be a bad performance.’ Collected here are his Mozart symphony recordings with the Concertgebouworkest for Philips (1972–73), including a rehearsal sequence for Symphony No. 33, as well as the celebrated 1955 […]

Rafael Kubelik, the Czech conductor, was in every way a big man: tall and robust in physique, he was the most generous of human beings and he inspired devoted affection among his friends and colleagues. This complete Decca collection finds Kubelík working with the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Israel Philharmonic, the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian […]

Leinsdorf scored an enormous personal triumph early in his first season (1962-63) as the Boston Symphony’s Music Director with Mahler’s First Symphony. The RCA recording they made together duly captures much of the brilliance and dash of their live chemistry in the work, and for months after its release it remained one of the best-selling […]

Minton · Solti · Mahler – the complete record of a supreme artistic partnership. For a memoir published in 2017, Yvonne Minton wrote that ‘Mahler’s music could have been written with Sir Georg and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in mind.’ She was too modest to speak of her own contribution, in which a superbly schooled […]

The complete Decca-recorded legacy of an illustrious Mahlerian, newly remastered, with several recordings receiving their first international CD release on Decca. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra lays claim to the closest and longest relationship with the music of Mahler. It was a relationship nurtured by the friendship between the composer and the orchestra’s second music director, […]

For years, admitted Sir Georg Solti to High Fidelity magazine in January 1967, ‘Mahler bored me. He came to me or I came to him, eight or nine years ago. Up till then his symphonies were all pieces and bits. Now I see their form, I love them. It is not enough to like music. […]

After the Fourth in 1961, the First in 1964 and the Second in 1966, the Ninth was the fourth of Mahler’s symphonies to be recorded for Decca by Sir Georg Solti. Symphonies 1, 2 and plus No. 3 from 1968, were all made with the London Symphony Orchestra but the cycle quickly expanded its horizons […]

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 […]

Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And in the fourth volume, Music of the Night, there’s the ‘Barcarolle’ from Offenbach’s ‘Tales of Hoffmann’, slow movements from String Serenades by Mozart, Dvorak and Suk and of course, Chopin’s night music, celebrated by his popular D flat major Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2.

Both Mahler’s First and Third symphonies, originally enjoyed subtitles for their movements. The first movement of the First was one ‘Spring Without End’, the second ‘Under Full Sail’. For the Third, Mahler paid tribute to the ‘Flowers in the Meadow’, the ‘Animals in the Forest’, ‘Man’, ‘Angels’ and ‘Love’, respectively, for its five movements. Both […]

The legendary 1972 recording of Mahler’s First Symphony, here beautifully remastered for super-budget release. Haitink conveys all the joy and the angst beneath Mahler’s score and the recording has warmth and bloom.