A new-world virtuoso with old-world musicianship: the complete Decca recordings of JOSHUA BELL, capturing the first decade of the violinist’s career on record. Decca signed the nineteen-year-old Joshua Bell in 1986 on the basis of privately made concerto tapes. Bell had first picked up a violin at the age of four, but he had been […]
“We all envied her, because all that we had to struggle so hard to achieve seemed so natural and self-evident to her because she knew how to sing from the heart” said Elisabeth Schwarzkopf of her colleague IRMGARD SEEFRIED. Collected here are Seefried’s complete recital recordings for Deutsche Grammophon as well as highlights from her […]
The first in a three-volume edition of the complete Decca recordings of Sir Adrian Boult, this set represents the most complete survey ever issued of Sir Adrian Boult’s British music recordings for Decca. It includes previously unpublished recordings of Holst and a pioneering cycle of Vaughan Williams. LIMITED EDITION. Boult began recording for Decca in […]
From the earliest days of his career, Anthony Collins (1893–1963) earned a reputation as a musician of parts: violist, conductor, arranger and composer. He had led the viola section of the London Symphony Orchestra under Beecham and Mengelberg before swapping bow for baton in the 1930s, and by then had already begun to promote the […]
Six Violin Sonatas from the 20th century performed by German violinist Max Rostal and recorded for Argo and Deutsche Grammophon. Having fled from the Nazis and moved to London in 1934, the German violinist Max Rostal became a fixture of the English capital’s musical scene and an inspired interpreter of English music. With his regular […]
A trio of twentieth-century classics, sardonic and timely tales, in long-unavailable Decca/Argo recordings from the 1970s. Roberto Gerhard’s imagination was immediately fired by reading Albert Camus’ 1947 novel, La Peste, about a French-Algerian town in the sudden grip of bubonic plague. He determined to make a musical setting (The Plague), and after its premiere in […]
Compiled together for the first time, historic recordings of the grand finale to the world’s greatest music festival. In 1969, Philips captured the unique atmosphere of the Last Night of the Proms. Master of ceremonies was Sir Colin Davis who had become chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra two years earlier. During the 1960s, […]
Robert Irving: the pre-eminent ballet conductor of his day on home turf and vividly captured in Decca’s superbly life-like, late mono-sound with his complete recordings for that label. Despite bringing the orchestras of both The Royal Ballet and the New York City Ballet to celebrated peaks of brilliance in execution, the conductor Robert Irving left […]
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 […]
There’s nothing quite as heady as being at the Last Night of the Proms. As the summer comes to a close and this great annual festival in London concludes, the crowds gather in the park to watch this event broadcast in the park (and now, in other British cities too). And those that have been […]
Daniel Barenboim’s sumptuous performances of English music have long been favourites and here they are beautifully remastered with state-of-the-art technology for this release. Pinchas Zukerman’s performance of ‘The Lark Ascending’ is surely a stand-out among recordings of this work (‘beautifully played, highly sympathetic performance’ said Gramophone). What’s more, the addition of Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto, […]
The stunning ‘Covent Garden Anniversary Album’ released complete for the first time on CD, coupled with Solti’s firecracker accounts of Overtures and Preludes. Soloists include a range of 1960s Covent Garden stalwarts, – Carlyle, Sutherland, Veasey, Minton, Shuard, Collier, Gobbi, Evans, Pears and Ward; and conductors – Downes, Bonynge, Walton and Goodall. Nearly 160 minutes […]
