Among the bel canto and verismo operatic repertoire Richard Bonynge recorded for Decca, he also found time to unearth much hitherto forgotten ballet scores as well as forgotten music from the Baroque and Classical eras. Music by J.C. Bach and Salieri were recorded, rare Baroque overtures were explored and he also recorded three largely forgotten […]
Karl Böhm’s only studio version of this work was recorded in 1958. When Deutsche Grammophon originally planned the recording, there were already two rival versions on the market: the Decca recording under Erich Kleiber and EMI’s version under Herbert von Karajan. Karajan’s recording was made in December 1956 and should have included Irmgard Seefried as […]
When the young Karl Böhm, fresh from his studies in Vienna, returned to Graz to take up a post at the opera house which had a good reputation, his place, naturally, was at the bottom of the ladder and the operas of the great Richard Strauss were quite simply out of his reach. He conducted […]
Among the bel canto and verismo operatic repertoire Richard Bonynge recorded for Decca, he also found time to unearth much hitherto forgotten ballet scores, as well as forgotten music from the Baroque and Classical eras. Music by J.C. Bach and Salieri were recorded, rare Baroque overtures were explored and he also recorded three largely forgotten […]
Bellini’s advice to librettists, in 1834, might profitably hang above the desks of all who would pursue this singular art today: ‘Carve in your head in adamantine letters: Opera must make people weep, feel horrified, die through singing. It is wrong to want to write all the numbers the same way but they must all […]
‘If I were condemned to hear only one voice for the remainder of my life I think it might well be hers. If I wanted to be charmed, to laugh or cry I would find her the perfect companion. In her singing … we hear someone whose every utterance bespeaks natural sincerity and truthful feeling’ […]
‘If I were condemned to hear only one voice for the remainder of my life I think it might well be hers. If I wanted to be charmed, to laugh or cry I would find her the perfect companion. In her singing … we hear someone whose every utterance bespeaks natural sincerity and truthful feeling’ […]
The Piano Quartets are like heavenly twins, alike on the outside but very different in tone. The G minor, like all Mozart’s works in that key, is intense, introspective and even tragic in places. The E flat is extrovert, bracing, brilliant and straightforwardly pleasurable. The present performances feature what, at first glance, is a strange […]
‘If I were condemned to hear only one voice for the remainder of my life I think it might well be hers. If I wanted to be charmed, to laugh or cry I would find her the perfect companion. In her singing … we hear someone whose every utterance bespeaks natural sincerity and truthful feeling’ […]
Driven almost to distraction by debts, illness in the family – his baby daughter Theresia died on 29 July – and the indifference of a fickle public, Mozart often turned for financial succour to a fellow Freemason, Johann Michael Puchberg. This gentleman, whose name has come down through history solely because of his assistance to […]
The first of Josef Suk’s two mature quartets, in B flat major, Op. 11, was partly written in Helsinki and Vienna hotels early in 1896, the last two movements being composed at home in Prague. The work which positively breathes romanticism, inevitably shows the influence of his beloved teacher and future father-in-law, Antonín Dvořák. By […]
Begun in October 1876, Smetana’s E minor Quartet, ‘From My Life’, was completed by the end of the year; its first reception was lukewarm, being considered too advanced, musically and technically and too ‘orchestral’. It certainly presented the viola in a fresh light: never had this instrument been elevated to such eminence in a piece […]
