On 22 January 1785, Mozart’s father, Leopold, wrote from Salzburg to his daughter, Nannerl, retelling the news ‘that last Saturday (Wolfgang) performed his six quartets [in truth probably just KV 387, 421 and 428] for his dear friend Haydn and other good friends and that he has sold them to Artaria for a hundred ducats’. […]

‘The Gondoliers’ is the sunniest of all the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas and was one of the most harmonious collaborations between two such temperamentally incompatible yet artistically well-matched men. The morning after the rapturously received opening night in December 1889, Gilbert wrote to Sullivan: ‘I must thank you for the magnificent work you have […]

In 1948, the young Hungarian conductor, Ferenc Fricsay (1914–1963) who had studied with Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, was invited to Berlin to become chief conductor of the RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) Symphonie Orchester and chief conductor of the Städtische Oper (today, the Deutsche Oper Berlin). The RIAS Symphonie Orchester changed its name […]

‘Queen Victoria loved music for music’s sake and singing appealed especially to her. It was a joy, a necessity to her to hear music every day and to keep in contact with the musicians of her time. Artists met with the most charming and graceful reception and the Queen always entertained herself for a long […]

This recording will make you smile. Two of the most accomplished opera singers of the twentieth century turn their attention to some of the best known songs from Broadway musicals, and the effect is ‘Wunderbar’! Cesare Siepi was a prolific recording artist on 78rpm records before making a number of outstanding LP sets for Decca. […]

These new re-masterings cast fresh light on seminal recordings of ‘Cavalleria rusticana’ and ‘Pagliacci’ both featuring Mario del Monaco. He was in his prime when he recorded Turiddu and Canio, and his performances in both recordings could hardly be more spine-tingling. ‘Cavalleria rusticana’ was recorded in 1954 and ‘Pagliacci’ in 1953. Franco Ghione’s feeling for the lyricism […]

With its roots in the mid-nineteenth century English opera tradition of Balfe and Wallace, ‘The Yeomen of the Guard’, is an integrated hybrid of operetta and romantic opera that combines the sparkling essence of previous Savoy successes with heightened drama and emotion while its score is also free from the earnestness in which much of […]

George Malcolm, who died in 1997, irreverently called the harpsichord the ‘jangle box’, yet he was a master of that instrument and of several other musical domains as well. Of Scottish ancestry, he was born in London in 1917 and when he was just seven he was admitted to the Royal College of Music. He […]

Monteux recorded Brahms’s Second Symphony several times; in addition to the present recording for Decca with the Vienna Philharmonic, there are versions with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. He recorded the ‘Variations on a theme by Haydn’ just once, in 1958 with the London Symphony Orchestra. This reissue continues Eloquence’s survey […]

Monteux’s Beethoven has been described as visionary. Respect for the spirit of the score, directness of expression, exceptionally well-drilled playing and a sense of untainted idealism that lay at the very heart of the composer’s vision – these are the qualities that typify Monteux’s interpretation of Beethoven. Eight of the symphonies were recorded for Decca; […]

Perhaps one of the grandest and most emotional of all the recordings of Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’ ever made, Norman Del Mar and the Royal Philharmonic recorded it in January 1975 in the superb acoustic of the Guildford Cathedral. The Pomp and Circumstance Marches have a real swagger too. Anthony Burton provides the insightful notes.

One of the hidden gems of the Decca catalogue is this 1963 recording of nearly an hour of highlights from Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’ conducted by Sir Edward Downes with a model cast of soloists, including Fernando Corena as the Knight and Regina Resnik in one of her signature roles, Alice Ford. What makes the recording even more […]