Posts tagged as "eloquence"

Josef Krips in concert with the Concertgebouworkest

May 23, 2024

Words by Niek Nelissen (Translation: Margaret Koford) As a recording artist, the Viennese conductor Josef Krips (1902–1974) lived through the most significant technological developments in the music industry. His first recordings were released on 78rpm records, which could only hold about four minutes of music per side. From 1950 onwards music was recorded on tape […]

QUEEN OF THE KEYBOARD

August 11, 2022

Mark Ainley surveys the artistry of Greek pianist Gina Bachauer, to mark the release of her complete Mercury Living Presence recordings. Many pianists are impossible to classify and fit no school. Gina Bachauer was one of these… unlike most modern pianists she was a romantic with a virtuoso approach to the keyboard…. She played in […]

Paul Paray & Mercury Living Presence

July 5, 2022

What The Critics Said VOLUME 1 “Judging from the first releases by him and the newly resuscitated Detroit Symphony Orchestra, [Paray] should soon come into his own. His reading of this much-played symphony is a thrill from start to finish.” High Fidelity, November 1953 (Franck) “Once again, Paray reveals his mastery at interpreting modern French […]

From Shellac to Stereo

May 5, 2022

MICHAEL GRAY explores the Wilhelm Kempff legacy Wilhelm Kempff began recording for Deutsche Grammophon (DG) in the autumn of 1922. (Kempff is quoted as saying he began recording in 1920. However, his first record falls within DG’s matrix series for discs made in the autumn of 1922.) Before 1916, DG had been the German branch […]

WIDMUNG – DEDICATION

February 22, 2022

On the occasion of Wolfgang Holzmair’s 70th birthday, Imogen Cooper pays tribute to the man and musician. It is close on 30 years since Wolfgang and I rehearsed for our first concert. It was in a little church in Steinbach, on the Attersee in the Austrian Salzkammergut. We were to perform the Schubert Schwanengesang and […]

FOU TS’ONG

November 23, 2021

“I still remember the time when I played Rachmaninov’s Piano Concert No. 3 for the first time in London in 2001. After the concert, he gave me a hug with tears in his eyes, and said that he had high hopes for me. Master Fou was a great artist that I respected very much. I […]

ALEXANDER GADJIEV

September 21, 2021

Piers Lane writes about the winner of the 2021 Sydney International Piano Competition – the first to be held online – a selection of whose live recordings are released on Decca Eloquence. What an exciting time it was in January 2020! I had appointed four experienced musicians to listen along with me to the 285 […]

Olivier Messiaen – The Composer I Know; The Man I Knew

December 14, 2020

On the occasion of her 80th birthday (17 January 2021), Dame Gillian Weir reflects on her working relationship with French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992), with illuminating insight and amusing anecdotes. Their special relationship is now celebrated in a new 22-CD Limited Edition Box Set on Eloquence, in which Messiaen’s work features on seven on […]

Réminiscences de Donna Ruth

November 26, 2020

95-year-old piano legend Ruth Slenczynska reminiscences with Eloquence Classics about studying with her legendary mentors, Josef Hofmann and Sergei Rachmaninov, and witnessing the creation of her classmate Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.