‘Karajan’s producer’ on the podium – the complete recordings of Otto Gerdes for Deutsche Grammophon, including previously unpublished material and displaying some of the most thrilling versions of orchestral masterpieces to be recorded. Reviews for these recordings reached for superlatives: “a stunning disc from first moment to last” (Brahms 4); “Luminous sound” (Eugene Onegin); “rather […]
From 78 to stereo, this is Sir Malcolm Sargent’s Decca legacy reissued complete, including several recordings new to CD. Sargent’s broad repertoire and warm rapport with audiences made him easy to underestimate. Yet Schnabel and Toscanini, among other celebrated foreign musicians, held him in the highest regard. This new Eloquence collection of the conductor’s Decca […]
Scintillating pianism in music from Mozart to Messiaen: the complete Argo and Decca recordings of John Ogdon. John Ogdon began to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1953, at the age of 16. Fellow students such as Alexander Goehr and Harrison Birtwistle were astonished by the speed of Ogdon’s mind, matched by […]
A quarter-century of postwar Bayreuth recordings, made live at the Festspielhaus by Decca, DG and Philips: this is an absorbing history in sound of Wagner interpretation featuring several albums of timeless authority. This survey of Wagner’s mature operas, excluding the Ring, takes the listener from Parsifal in 1951 under Hans Knappertsbusch, through to Die Meistersinger […]
A violinist-conductor who understood orchestras from the inside out: commanding power and Viennese warmth in the complete Decca symphonic recordings of Walter Weller. As the youngest ever leader of the Vienna Philharmonic, Walter Weller quickly established a natural rapport with orchestras at home and abroad when he swapped bow for baton in the late 1960s. […]
This box brings together a collection of Decca recordings displaying the dynamism of Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, including material previously unreleased on CD. In the generation after Ataúlfo Argenta, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos became the most prominent Spanish conductor, both at home and abroad. Just 25 when he was appointed Music Director of […]
Volume 2 of Antal Doráti’s London recordings for Mercury covers sessions between June 1960 (Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony) and August 1966 (Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suites). By way of a bonus, the set concludes with a rarity issued on Philips and scarcely seen since, an album of neoclassical works by Julian Orbón (Cantigas del Rey, sung by Heather […]
Covering recordings from July 1956 to July 1961, here are early stereo spectaculars on Mercury, under the inspired baton of Antal Doráti: classic albums of Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and many more in a new ‘Original Jackets’ Limited Edition. Eloquence has been making a systematic and critically acclaimed survey of the Mercury legacy of recordings made […]
Driving intensity, rhythmic flair and demonstration-quality sound are brought to the fore in a new anthology of Antal Doráti’s early recordings with the Philharmonia Hungarica on Mercury and Philips. Founded in 1956, the Philharmonia Hungarica emerged from turbulent post-war times as a crack ensemble of émigré Hungarian musicians who had fled Communism for the West. […]
Vienna, old and new, meet on this journey from Mozart to Schoenberg and then on to Berg, Weill, Gerhard and Ligeti with David Atherton and the London Sinfonietta. Central to this anthology is the pioneering set of music by Schoenberg recorded in 1973–74 critically acclaimed for its ‘big line and attention to detail (Stereo Review) […]
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 […]
