You will search far to find such potent, explosive recordings of the Smetana ‘Bartered Bride’ excerpts or the selection of five ‘Slavonic Dances’ here included, or as picturesquely sculpted a ‘Vltava’. Istvan Kertesz brings poetry and fire in equal measure to these works in a superbly recorded concert that is rounded off with Dvorak’s tuneful […]
As a pendant to his legendary cycle of the Haydn symphonies with the Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati also recorded supplementary symphonies and the Sinfonia Concertante, all of which made their way into the highly-regarded boxed set of these works. He also recorded these gorgeous 24 Minuets as a pendant – then, as now, a comparative […]
On the face of it, the Strauss family would seem to symbolise everything that is late-nineteenth-century Austrian. It was not always so: the grandfather of Johann Strauss I was not only Hungarian but Jewish and had been part of the wave of immigrants from Hungary attracted by Vienna’s enduring prosperity. Johann I himself, made every […]
Famous for his waltzes and polkas, the popularity of Johann Strauss has endured, not just compositions he wrote himself but music arranged by others. Strangely enough, for one of the greatest composers of dance music, he never composed a ballet. This album couples two such arrangements, both for the ballet. Antal Doráti’s arrangement, entitled ‘Graduation […]
Dorati made two recordings both with the Concertgebouw, of Smetana’s epic cycle of tone poems ‘Má Vlast’. This first, very rare, mono recording, made in 1956, hardly sounds 50 years old – such was the acoustic of the Concertgebouw, not to mention the high quality of the recording itself. As for the performance, it’s a […]
This coupling presents Heinrich Schiff and Colin Davis’s mellow reading of Dvorák’s Cello Concerto, recorded in 1980, with Dorati’s earlier 1959 Concertgebouw traversal of the ‘New World’ Symphony – a veritable fire and brimstone reading of this popular work. Both works were recorded in the fabled Concertgebouw’s main hall.
Following a litany of requests, Dorati’s supreme recording of Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite is reissued on Eloquence together with the original coupling of Robert Russell Bennett’s swaggering and masterly orchestral synthesis from ‘Porgy and Bess’. As a bonus, Howard Hanson’s bright Mercury recording of Grofé’s ‘Mississippi Suite’ fills out this reissue.
‘Il prigioniero’ (The Prisoner), an opera in a prologue and one act with both music and libretto written by Luigi Dallapiccola, was first broadcast by the Italian radio station RAI on 1st December 1949. The work is based on the short story ‘La torture par l’espérance’ (“Torture by Hope”) by the French writer Auguste Villiers […]
