Rich and ripe readings of Mozart’s two piano quartets from Georg Solti and the Melos Quartett, in which the conductor takes time off from his podium duties to return to the keyboard – where, in fact, his whole career began. Recorded a year apart, these readings have both thrust and warmth and are made available […]

Mozart’s sublime masterpiece for violin and viola, the Sinfonia Concertante, was recorded on a few occasions by Marriner, but strangely enough, this version with two of the Academy’s foremost musicians – Alan Loveday and Stephen Shingles – has lain buried in the archives. Now, it receives its first release on CD and likewise its coupling, […]

Colin Davis and the English Chamber Orchestra made several Mozart recordings for L’Oiseau-Lyre. All five symphonies and both Divertimenti that he recorded are collected here on a 2CD set (the Concertone has also been re-issued). Crisp and tender, they are classic performances from the 1960s and will be warmly welcomed in these CD transfers by […]

Overshadowed by his father, Michael Haydn penned some delectable music and here are father and son on a single disc of Violin Concertos, completed with two Mozart ‘movements’.

Grumiaux was an inveterate chamber musician and together with his Grumiaux Trio as well as selected soloists, delivers sublime, unforced yet probing performances of works by Mozart and Schubert.

Kertész’ orchestral Mozart has been well documented on Eloquence with many releases appearing on CD for the first time. Now, restored to the catalogue, is his dramatic, muscular reading of the ‘Requiem’. Stretching to 79 minutes, the disc is filled out with selections from the composer’s Masonic Music, with the ‘Maurerische Trauermusik’ bearing an uncanny resemblance […]

Two slimmer works of Austro-German chamber repertoire – Mozart’s popular ‘Kegelstatt’ (Skittles) Trio and Weber’s lesser known but quite virtuoso, Flute Trio, preface Brahms’s magnificent Horn Trio on these rare L’Oiseau-Lyre recordings from The Melos Ensemble. All represent first releases on CD.

Extremely rare, Ansermet’s Mozart recordings for Decca are now released on a 2CD set. The very diversity of the works makes for an interesting Mozart/Ansermet concert, led by an aristocratic reading of the ‘Prague’ Symphony and continuing with the second concerto with principal SRO flautist, André Pepin and a sublime account of the motet ‘Exsultate, […]

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 […]

This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Both Clarinet Quintets on this disc are late works of the respective composers and both were inspired by […]

This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Those who campaign against background music in shops, restaurants, hotel lobbies and lifts do not have history on […]

This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Five titles were released in September and the remaining five are released this month. This release forms a […]