In 1971, Istvan Kertesz went into the studio with an array of opera singers with whom he enjoyed performing to make a recording of arias, duets and ensembles from Mozart’s most popular operas. The results, in terms of characterisation and energy, are in a class of their own and what’s more, the stellar singers blend […]

Elegantly-turned performances of these symphonies with Kertesz revelling in the romantic ethos to which these works point. The recordings are rich, warm and beautifully balanced.

Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony bring a fantastic array of colour as well as subtlety to these marvellous Rhapsodies. With an array of countries represented – the Rhapsodies largely paying tribute to indigenous music – the cover illustration highlights these associations.

Robust and red-blooded performances of the later symphonies here, pointing unashamedly to the Romantic era. The opening of No. 39, especially, has few rivals in terms of intensity and the way Kertesz balances light and shade.

The world’s most popular period-instrument soprano, Kirkby’s pure, crystalline sound defined how vocal music of the baroque and earlier eras should sound for a whole generation or more. A pioneer of the Early Music movement, Emma Kirkby presents an intimate concert of both familiar and rare Purcell songs. Lindsay Kemp writes: ‘Even today, nearly half […]

It was common from medieval times to think of the Arts as female; in most European languages the words for them are feminine, and in pictures too they were represented as heavenly ladies, each carrying some appropriate object, and often attended by the male figures of her most famous earthly servants. The frontispiece chosen by […]

The Boston Symphony Chamber Players made a few critically-acclaimed recordings for Deutsche Grammophon in the 1970s, among them the Second Viennese School’s reworkings of Strauss waltzes. Drawn from players of the Boston Symphony, with Michael Tilson Thomas as pianist (here in the two string sonatas) the playing is febrile, alert and atmospheric. This collection brings […]

Mozart was brought up at the court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and the music of the Roman Catholic liturgy was central to his early experience. Salzburg had its own ecclesiastical musical traditions, dating back well into the seventeenth century with such men as Andreas Hofer, Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat; more immediately relevant to […]

As a pendant to his legendary cycle of the Haydn symphonies with the Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati also recorded supplementary symphonies and the Sinfonia Concertante, all of which made their way into the highly-regarded boxed set of these works. He also recorded these gorgeous 24 Minuets as a pendant – then, as now, a comparative […]

As one of music’s greatest recyclers, Handel would have earned untold respect in our time. That he managed (largely) to achieve this so felicitously, so that whether you were listening to an aria in the context of an English oratorio or an Italian cantata it seemed intuitively ‘right’, is tribute to his skill. This collection […]

Gervase de Peyer was one of the leading clarinet players in the 1960s, making several recordings as both soloist and chamber-music player for L’Oiseau-Lyre. Three of his most critically-acclaimed recordings – concertos by Mozart, Weber and Spohr – are offered here, all performed with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The 1897 premiere of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 was one of the most notorious disasters in classical music. The composer, sensing that misfortune was about to befall him and his newest creation, sat not in the audience but backstage (‘squirming,’ according to his cousin Lyudmila Skalon) in what is now the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall. […]