Three of Respighi’s most colourful and popular orchestral works in truly legendary performances. Both ‘Pines’ and ‘Fountains’ are massive orchestral scores evoking the named sights of Rome. ‘The Birds’ is based on music by Respighi’s Baroque predecessors and is a delightful, tuneful evocation of an earlier time in gleaming orchestrations.

The famous ‘Shine’ piano concerto – No. 3 – now appears at budget price in this very romantic performance from one of Decca’s star pianists, Alicia de Larrocha. The coupling is the no-less-difficult and wildly exciting Piano Concerto No. 1 from Peter Katin.

There are few Ravel orchestral compilations – at any price – that could hold a candle to this one. And most of the Mehta material appears on CD for the first time. A wilder ‘La Valse’, a more erotic ‘Daphnis et Chloé’ with its orgiastic finale you’d be hard-pressed to find! And what a magical finale […]

Stephen Kovacevich’s accounts of the Bartók piano concertos have long set the benchmark by which others are measured. In their gravity, exploration of colour and explosion of fury they are unmatched and the partnership with Davis is febrile and energetic.

Jean Martinon (1910-76) was not only a successful conductor but also an accomplished composer and his musical intuition and fine ear for detail is evident at every turn in these recordings. This release will achieve cult status, as did the original recordings, made in 1958 (Massenet, Meyerbeer) and 1959 (Dvorak). The French works were recorded […]

Purists might squirm but purists should think again. As Raymond Tuttle says in his background notes to this unique release, ‘When purists complain about Bach played on the piano, they also need to be reminded that, as these five concertos were not written for the keyboard in the first place, one might argue that any […]

Gervase de Peyer was one of the leading clarinet players in the 1960s, making several recordings as both soloist and chamber-music player for L’Oiseau-Lyre. Three of his most critically-acclaimed recordings – concertos by Mozart, Weber and Spohr – are offered here, all performed with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Sergei Rachmaninov began his Third Symphony in August 1935 at Senar, his Swiss villa, while riding a final wave of popular success. His ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’ had enjoyed a successful premiere the year before, and subsequent performances had gone far to mute criticism that the composer’s well of inspiration had dried up. […]

It is commonplace to observe how little separates the cradle from the grave. For some, the words ‘womb’, ‘room’, ‘doom’ and ‘tomb’ have sufficed to encapsulate the human experience. When infant mortality rates in the developed countries were higher than they are today, families could hardly help being reminded that last night’s lullaby might be […]

In 1976, Willi Boskovsky, unusually perhaps, made a lovely Grieg recording for Decca. About a third of it was briefly issued in the 1980s on Decca’s ‘Headline’ series but now, for the first time, we offer the whole record with the bonus of Stanley Black’s recording of the four ‘Lyric Pieces’ (on CD for the […]

One day in 1891, General Meredith Reid appeared unexpectedly at the doorstep of Claude Debussy. Because the composer spoke little English and Reid spoke no French at all, it took a hastily obtained interpreter to sort out exactly what it was that the august General wanted from the composer. It turned out that the General […]

Two recordings make their international CD premieres here. Solti recorded both these popular Mendelssohn symphonies twice for Decca and these are the earlier versions. The ‘Scottish’ dates from November 1952 and is in mono. The ‘Italian’ in stereo, recorded 1958, also with producer John Culshaw, is an absolute legend and has had many requests over […]