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Mozart: Ballet Music

March 12, 2016

Concertos, symphonies, operas … sonatas, serenades and divertimenti. But Mozart and Ballet Music? Truly a rarity! Much of the music on this disc formed the tenth and last LP in Decca’s complete Dances and Marches series with the Wiener Mozart Ensemble under Willi Boskovsky for which he chose younger players, some of whom had not […]

Falla: Piano Music

March 12, 2016

Although she never liked being pigeon-holed as a Spanish piano music specialist, Alicia de Larrocha was supreme in the music of her country. This CD brings together all of the solo piano recordings of music by Falla she made for Decca in 1973, together with her first (1970) of two recordings of Nights in the […]

España

March 12, 2016

Jesús López-Cobos’s scintillating and sonically thrilling Decca recordings of Spanish music are here represented with music both Spanish and Spanish-influenced. Scenes and Dances from Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, Chabrier’s picture-postcard essay España and two works by Turina (one meditative, the other more extrovert) form the Spanish contingent of this orchestral recital, while Rimsky-Korsakov’s technicolour Capriccio […]

Music of the Monarchs

March 12, 2016

More than 250 years of music celebrating the reign of the great British monarchs CD 1 – HANDEL: Coronation Anthems Handel’s four uplifting Coronation Anthems, including the epic Zadok the Priest with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and his beautiful Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, with its celestial invocation for trumpet and counter-tenor, ‘Eternal […]

Spanish Piano Encores

March 12, 2016

Although she disliked being typecast as a Spanish music specialist, there’s no doubt that Alicia de Larrocha’s way with this music is in a class by itself. No matter what the repertoire for a recital she gave, regardless of whether it included Spanish music, she was often called upon by her audiences to provide at […]

Richard Strauss: Tone Poems

March 12, 2016

This 2CD set brings together for the first time all of Lorin Maazel’s Decca recordings of Strauss’ tone poems with the Vienna Philharmonic (he recorded ‘Tod und Verklärung’ twice, the second time with the New Philharmonia Orchestra). All the recordings were made in Vienna’s Sofiensaal and star VPO principals were soloists in ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘Der […]

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 19 & 22

March 12, 2016

Larrocha in Mozart, whether the sonatas or concertos, has always attracted high praise. But even by her high standards, this particular coupling which made its first appearance in 1983, must be counted among her most successful concerto recordings. One distinguished reviewer wrote at the time that her captivating performance of the Piano Concerto in F […]

Falla, Granados, Ravel: Orchestral Works

March 12, 2016

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos’s 1965–66 recording of Spanish orchestral favourites was a huge success in its time, not only for the orchestra and conductor’s sense of colour, flamboyance and rhythmic acuity, but also for the sheer panoramic sound-spectrum with the fabled ‘Decca Sound’. Bringing together works both Spanish in origin as well as of Spanish […]

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4; Overtures; Haydn Variations

March 12, 2016

Lorin Maazel had a long history of recording with Decca and many of his recordings are being reissued on Eloquence. Thrilling sound and vigour mark the performances of Maazel’s 1970s Brahms cycle from Cleveland, and Gramophone made a note of the superb quality of the sound engineering. The set is issued internationally on CD for the first […]

20th Century Portraits

March 12, 2016

Some of Lorin Maazel’s first recordings were made for Deutsche Grammophon when he was merely 27. This collection presents vivid performances of three great twentieth-century ballet scores, all infused with the folk rhythms of their respective composers’ native lands – Falla’s Andalusia and Stravinsky’s Russia. Both composers also exploited the most sophisticated orchestral textures available to […]

Chopin: Polonaises Nos. 1-6; Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

March 12, 2016

Lazar Berman, a bear of a man whom The Times of London called ‘one of the last unabashed exponents of the Romantic tradition of Russian pianism’, was known for the power of his playing and for his prodigious technique but was also capable of great delicacy at the keyboard. The core of his repertoire was […]

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage; Schubert Lieder transcriptions

March 12, 2016

Lazar Berman, a bear of a man whom The Times of London called ‘one of the last unabashed exponents of the Romantic tradition of Russian pianism’, was known for the power of his playing and for his prodigious technique but was also capable of great delicacy at the keyboard. The core of his repertoire was […]