Ion Voicu was a legend in his own country, Romania and in the profession at large and appeared in most major musical centres. Yet he was not as well known in the English-speaking countries as he should have been. The long cold war and the dictatorial regime in his native land were mainly to blame […]

The bass voice (basso, encompassing both baritone and bass in our modern terminology) occupies a special place in Bach’s sacred vocal music. As the two great Passion settings testify, it was the solo bass that represented the vox Christi or ‘voice of Christ’, following an established tradition in church music. Matthias Goerne is here at […]

Completed in 1719 and first performed in 1733, Handel’s opera seria Orlando is widely recognised as one of the eighteenth century’s greatest operas. One of the work’s most acclaimed recordings is that of Christopher Hogwood, with a stellar line-up of Baroque vocal specialists, including James Bowman, in the title role and Emma Kirkby and David Thomas. […]

Issued following several requests Sir David Willcocks’s complete 1966 LP of Howells’ choral music, originally issued on Argo, makes its first appearance on CD. Howells contributes his own notes (reprinted from the original LP) in which he outlines the relationship between each of the settings and the building for which it was intended. It includes […]

Indian-born, of Jewish-Viennese parents and raised in Paris, virtuoso pianist, Jean-Rodolphe Kars, converted to Catholicism in 1976 and was baptised in 1977. Mysteriously, in 1981, he put an end to his career as a pianist, entering the priesthood in 1986. During the late-1960s and early 70s, Kars made a few recordings for Decca, all of […]

Between January and December 1951 Dutch conductor Paul van Kempen recorded a series of major Tchaikovsky works with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The performances are at once fiery and incandescent – a kind of meaningful sound and fury – and have long been out of the catalogue. But even when they were issued they divided critical […]

An undiscovered treasure! Recorded in 1966 but never released, are nearly 100 minutes of Messiaen performed by Gillian Weir shortly after she won the St. Alban’s Competition. At the centre of this recital is Les Corps Glorieux and the other pieces display Dame Gillian’s immense command over and total empathy with this music. The 7000+-word notes […]

Indian-born, of Jewish-Viennese parents and raised in Paris, virtuoso pianist Jean-Rodolphe Kars converted to Catholicism in 1976 and was baptised in 1977. Mysteriously, in 1981, he put an end to his career as a pianist, entering the priesthood in 1986. During the late-1960s and early 70s Kars made a few recordings for Decca, all of […]

Andor Foldes recorded a selection of Kodály’s piano works for American Decca (the catalogue now owned by Deutsche Grammophon) in January 1957. A close compatriot of both Bartók and Kodály, Foldes was one of Hungary’s pre-eminent pianist whose discography for Deutsche Grammophon is extensive. Included on this CD are Foldes’s own transcriptions of music from […]

Between 1954 and 1955, the Hungarian pianist, Andor Foldes, recorded a substantial corpus of Bartók’s solo piano music for Deutsche Grammophon. Given his work with and close association with the composer, this is a significant reissue, and it is also the first time all four LPs (represented as per the original, across four CDs) appear […]

Karl Böhm made the first complete stereo recording of Elektra in 1960 for Deutsche Grammophon and to this day it remains one of the sonically and artistically most exciting recordings of this work. Böhm knew Strauss personally (the booklet includes a delightful photo of the two of them relaxing together!) and conducted several premieres of […]

Although the orchestra was the most natural vehicle for Tchaikovsky’s colourful and emotionally highly-charged music, in his string quartets (all dating from the 1870s) he showed a fine understanding of the medium and adopted a more purely musical train of thought – deriving in part from his deep fondness for the classical world of Mozart […]