Eighty minutes of Christmas at King’s: reference Argo recordings of Britten and Vaughan Williams capturing both the magic and joy of the season as well as the resonant glory of a famous acoustic. Britten’s genius as a choral composer centred around his ability to write rewarding parts for amateurs and young singers; his choice of […]
A 20th-century counterpart to ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ in a landmark recording, long unavailable, newly remastered and transferred to CD from the original tapes for the very first time. Hindemith wrote ‘Ludus tonalis’ in 1942 while staying in the US as a refugee from Nazi Germany. The hour-long piano cycle itself, finds refuge from conflict in […]
Epic interpretations of orchestral music from Wagner’s music dramas, conducted by James Levine. In 1991 and 1995, James Levine recorded two albums for Deutsche Grammophon which have become known as ‘bleeding chunks’, in Ernest Newman’s phrase, from Wagner’s operas. Collected together for the first time on this Eloquence reissue, they form a comprehensive survey of […]
Endowed with a prodigious and versatile musical talent, the harpsichordist’ George Malcolm, brought a consummate polish to both performance and recording. Despite working at the vanguard of historically informed performance, he did not pursue an aesthetic of zealous purity but concentrated rather on refinement of effect to communicate the spirit of the composition. Happy to […]
In 1936, the English composer and writer, Constant Lambert, described Igor Markevitch as ‘the leading figure of the Franco-Russian school’. As a composer he had been commissioned by Diaghilev and performed by the likes of Alfred Cortot and Roger Désormière but his posthumous reputation largely rests on his prowess as a conductor, a profession he […]
Recorded for the ASV label in 1990, this collection of Ravel’s piano music has never previously been released complete. Now reissued for the first time in more than a decade, this set presents not the kind of coolly objective view of the fastidious composer-craftsman to which modern recordings have made us accustomed but more of […]
Over the course of the 1990s, the Scottish pianist Gordon Fergus-Thompson recorded five albums of Scriabin on the ASV label. Long unavailable, they are compiled and reissued here for the first time complete with original booklet essays by Bryce Morrison. Interviewed in 1995, at roughly the halfway point of the series, Fergus-Thompson remarked that he […]
Stravinsky’s ground-breaking trilogy of Diaghilev-commissions plus a scandalous Bartók ballet, treated to sumptuous late-70s Decca engineering and the Vienna Philharmonic sound. Christoph von Dohnányi has long been considered one of the most versatile conductors of our time, making a name for himself in particular with the works of Romanticism and the Second Viennese School. From […]
A landmark collection of medieval music, available for the first time in many years. The ‘Carmina Burana’ is the most famous of all treasuries of medieval Latin and Middle High German poetry, named after the Bavarian monastery where it was compiled and preserved. It is best known today for Carl Orff’s hour-long selection from its rich […]
