The first commercial recording of Rameau’s first opera. Thanks to several Eloquence releases, the pioneering work of Anthony Lewis in the field of Baroque opera is now readily available: ‘The Fairy Queen’ (482 7449) of Purcell, Handel’s ‘Semele’ (482 5055) and a compilation albums of Handel arias (482 4759) were all critically acclaimed at the […]
The complete Philips and L’Oiseau-Lyre recordings of Bach cantatas made by Sir Neville Marriner, reissued together for the first time. Bach’s cantatas vary enormously in scale and style, ranging from festal works featuring elaborate choral movements and large instrumental ensembles including trumpets and drums, to more meditative cantatas for a single voice and only a […]
PhilomusicaSeveral Eloquence releases have celebrated the pellucid timbre and vivid characterisation of the British soprano’ Jennifer Vyvyan. ‘A treasury to treasure’ was the BBC Music Magazine’s verdict on ‘Songs of England’ (482 5045), a L’Oiseau Lyre recital from 1953. Four years later, she took part in the first complete recording of Purcell’s masque, ‘The Fairy […]
Finzi – more master of the small-scale than the large-scale – had a fine ear for poetry and a great sensitivity in his verse settings. In 1978 and 1979, Richard Hickox made two LPs for Argo of (mainly) choral music by Gerald Finzi. Never issued in their entirety, they appear here complete on a 2CD […]
Delius wrote no more poignant a piece than ‘Sea Drift’ – a Walt Whitman setting of lost love as seen through the eyes of a little boy. His African-American-inspired ‘Appalachia’, a magnificent set of variations on a Slavic song is the other major work on this recording and two miniatures conducted by Marriner complete it. […]
Imposing recordings of the ‘Coronation Mass’ and the ‘Vespers’ (which includes the famous ‘Laudate dominum’) plus Erna Spoorenberg, radiant in the ‘Exsultate, jubilate’.
Legendary since its ‘Phase 4’ Decca release, Dorati and his team bring to this recording all the swagger, colour and panache the work deserves. A thrilling performance!
Long unavailable, these classic 1960s recordings of a trio of Bach cantatas have been restored to circulation, now at super-budget price. Here’s what two Amazon.com ‘surfer’s had to say about these recordings: ‘I have every reason in the world to be grateful for having encountered this wonderful CD over ten years ago now when I […]
The names of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears are forever linked by their personal and creative partnership. Composer and interpreter have rarely enjoyed so long-standing or fruitful relationship. They met and became friends in 1937 while going through the papers of a mutual friend who had accidentally died. Within a couple of years, they had […]
Reissued to mark Colin Davis’s 80th birthday, this sublime Philips recording of ‘Dido and Aeneas’ makes a welcome return to the catalogue. The honeyed sound of its protagonists – Josephine Veasey (whom Colin Davis also chose as the Dido for his recording of Berlioz’s ‘Les Troyens’) and John Shirley-Quirk – is offset by a chaste-sounding Helen […]
A composer with an extraordinary ear for sonority, original in his outlook, sometimes misunderstood, now revered, Percy Grainger is one of Australia’s most unique sons, and, in the words of Sir Peter Pears, one of its “most independent and single-minded spirits”. Many of these recordings, of vocal and chamber orchestra pieces, were made by Decca […]
Long out of the catalogue, Marriner’s (Philips) recording of Bach’s B Minor Mass, with an array of splendid soloists, returns to circulation. Its coupling is the first release on CD of this recording of the deeply moving Cantata BWV 56 ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen’. It was one of two (extant) Bach cantatas for […]
