Among the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s first stereo recordings, these Decca sessions were taped in February 1961 and the performances and sound engineering are still as vivid as ever – in fact, quite overwhelming.
Well known for his three great ballet masterpieces, Tchaikovsky also inserted some of the most colourful orchestral balletic numbers into his operas. Colin Davis and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, recorded a selection of these in 1977 and both, for its vibrancy of colour as well as for its stunning (analogue) […]
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.
If you think you know these pieces, then listen again! Stokowski, the magician, sprinkles star-dust over the ‘Nutcracker’ and gives the orchestra a jolly old workout in a couple of places. The ‘Serenade’ has been considered one of the best ever recorded and the ‘Capriccio Italien’ is brazenly sunlit. The recordings, originally issued on Philips’ […]
The three 2CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.Ansermet’s recording of ‘The Nutcracker’ is in a league of its own, and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. Refined, yet passionate, many of the pieces on these recordings make their first international appearance […]
The three 2CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca. Ansermet’s recording of The Nutcracker is in a league of its own and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. Refined, yet passionate, many of the […]
Ruggiero Ricci is in his element in these virtuoso concertos and showpieces, with both the Tchaikovsky Concerto (with Sargent) and the Scherzo plus the Sibelius Violin Concerto, being released internationally on CD for the first time. The perceptive booklet notes by Tully Potter include a biography of Ricci and (sometimes wry!) comments by the violinist […]
Arthur Grumiaux was a prince among violinists and recorded extensively for Philips/Decca. Many of his recordings – some of them released internationally for the first time on CD – have appeared on an extensive series on the Eloquence label. Here is another – a rare 1956 performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto coupled with his highly-praised […]
Legendary cellist, Pierre Fournier’s stereo recording of the Dvořák Cello Concerto is well known but his earlier recording from July 1954 for Decca is largely forgotten. It’s revived in this Kubelik-led anthology also bringing back to the catalogue the conductor’s mono version of the Janáček Sinfonietta and his electrifying account of Tchaikovsky’s love poem ‘Romeo […]
Elisabeth Söderström was a born storyteller. She told stories not just in music, but also peppered her recitals on stage with tales and anecdotes. It made her a perfect interpreter for the collection of children’s songs by Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and Gretchaninov that she recorded with Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1977–78 and which appear on CD2 of […]
Born in 1888, the Russian soprano, Oda Slobodskaya, won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Despite having no formal musical training, she travelled, at the age of eighteen, from her hometown of Vilno (then part of […]
As one of the leading interpreters of Russian music, and Benjamin Britten’s soprano for some of his works, including the mighty War Requiem, it may come as a surprise to some that Galina Vishnevskaya began her professional career in 1944, singing, of all things, Viennese operettas (in Russian translation!) in the chorus of a travelling […]
