Beethoven broke new ground in exploring the potential of the symphony, both in terms of its subject matter and its qualities as descriptive music. The title of each movement of his sixth symphony, outlines what is being portrayed and in the case of the bird-calls at the end of the second movement, Beethoven made a […]

Indisputably one of the cornerstones of the string quartet repertoire as well as one of the masterpieces of the 20th century, Bartók’s six string quartets have been labelled ‘the greatest quartets since Beethoven’. Now, for the first time, the six quartets have been compiled onto two (rather than three) CDs with scholarly notes by Arnold […]

Eloquence exhumes a rare and the only recording by the Boskovsky Quartet, of Dvorák’s String Quartet, Op. 51 together with the Op. 81 Quintet. Both performances on this disc are led by the Vienna Philharmonic concertmaster Willi Boskovsky. The Op. 51 is one of Dvorak’s most masterly essays in the quartet genre while the Op. 81 […]

Herbert von Karajan’s mighty ‘Ring’ cycle, here represented through extended highlights allows us to sample Karajan’s choice of different singers for the same character in different operas – Fischer-Dieskau’s Wotan in ‘Das Rheingold’ and Thomas Stewart’s in ‘Siegfried’. There are notes on the music as well as an essay by Karajan expert, Richard Osborne, on […]

Late in the 1840s, Schumann entered a chamber music phase. It was, it is said, motivated partly by financial reasons – creating a body of chamber works that could be played by talented amateurs in their own homes. Many of the works on this disc date from 1849. Significantly, for collectors, one of these – […]

This is a 50-year retrospective (1950–2000) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring twelve extracts from eight operas (including all four operas of the ‘Ring’ cycle) with nine great singers. Wagner’s knowledge of heroes derived from two sources: the myths of ancient Greece and the sagas and poetry of northern Europe. In both […]

This is a 31-year retrospective (1956–1987) of great Wagner singing on Decca and Deutsche Grammophon featuring fourteen extracts from nine operas with seven great singers. Wagner’s heroines make for some of the most pivotal moments in his operas and this anthology highlights almost every aspect of his women – suspicious and inflexible (Fricka, here taken […]

Bayreuth is the holy grail for Wagner lovers and this outstanding disc captures great choral moments from Wagner’s operas over a period of nearly 30 years with key ‘big’ moments from seven operas, from the Sawallisch ‘Tannhäuser’ (1962) to Peter Schneider’s ‘Lohengrin’ (1990). The choruses are among the glories of Wagner’s stage works. They are central, not […]

Dance Mix represents the breathtaking diversity of contemporary classical music. Each of these eleven composers, all American, has treated a dance form differently. ‘They’ve added a symphonic dimension to the dance,’ says David Zinman. ‘They’re using the dance as a source for whatever expression they want to make. It’s not just dance music: it’s similar […]

Excerpts from Wagner operas have, on countless occasions, been transcribed for piano. A fairly long list of transcribers could be made, starting with Joseph Rubinstein, the first transcriber of an extract from Parsifal, going on through Bülow to Brassin, then from Carl Tausig to August Stradal, to speak only of those who were pupils of […]

Mozart’s final four quartets have a sublime quality. Two of these appear here, and the classic recording of KV575 receives its first international appearance on CD. Over the years Rainer Küchl became the VPO’s first concertmaster and his quartet has evolved to a point where only he remains from the four who recorded back in […]

These recordings of Mozart’s String Quartets (some of his final ones) KV 499 and KV 589, made in 1961 at the Sofiensaal in Vienna, have historic significance as the last gasp of a Viennese style of string playing of Mozart which stemmed from before World War II. Otto Strasser (1901–96), Willi Boskovsky (1909–91), his exact […]