Two beloved Romantic orchestral works in stellar performances, return to the catalogue in beautiful transfers. Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), often bemoaned the fact that he was associated with the French and Russian repertoires to the exclusion of music from outside of those traditions. He could hardly help it; after all, it was Monteux who conducted the […]

By 1958, Decca had been recording in stereo for four years, regularly sending out two production teams, one to make the stereo master, the other the mono master. Each team of producer and engineer worked independently of the other to produce the optimum sound for their system. In 1958, to launch their new stereo series […]

The potential of music as a means of adding dignity and grandeur to state occasions has surely been lost on a few rulers in history. Portraits of antique kings and queens are more often admired (or the reverse) for their artistic qualities, as opposed to the enhancement in the status of their subjects they were […]

Peter Maag (1919-2001) was born in Switzerland to a musical family. After studies in theology and philosophy and an early career as a pianist, he was encouraged to conduct. In that field, his mentors included Ernest Ansermet and, above all, Wilhelm Furtwängler. His success as a conductor grew throughout the late 1940s and 50s, and […]

Like the Beethoven symphonies, his concertos form a cornerstone of the standard classical repertoire and collected together here, on four discs, are all his major concertos in stellar performances. From the Haydnesque first concertos, to the serene calm, poise and beauty of the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto, to the swagger of the […]

Orchestral showpieces such as those grouped here were among the most obvious beneficiaries of the advances in recording technique pioneered by Decca from the late 1950s onwards. Works which may have seemed dauntingly complex to an earlier generation of gramophone collectors could now be captured with startling clarity, due in no small part to the […]

Today, Anton Bruckner, the son of a village schoolmaster, is recognised as one of the most important (albeit late-blooming) symphonists of the nineteenth century. During his lifetime, however, he was the subject of incomprehension and ridicule – that is, when critics and musicians paid him and his music any attention at all. Even in modern […]

Dvořák naturally gave a great deal of attention to the genre of the oratorio and it was his work in this area that firmly established his reputation in the English-speaking world. Rossini very much admired Pergolesi’s fine setting of the Stabat Mater but had not felt equal to attempting his own. The decision to try […]

István Kertész made one of the first stereo cycles of Dvorák’s symphonies on Decca with the London Symphony Orchestra. Earlier still, in 1961, he recorded just the Ninth (‘From the New World’), with the Vienna Philharmonic – one of the tautest, most thrilling performances ever committed to disc. It is coupled here with a recording […]

Many of the titles on this set formed couplings to Kertész’s celebrated LSO Dvorak symphony cycle for Decca. Collected here, over two generously-filled CDs, are all of the Overtures and Tone Poems of Dvorak that Kertész recorded. The fantastical, sometimes gruesome fairy tales of Erben exercised a curious fascination over Dvořák and three of his […]

Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók were Hungary’s two most important composers in the 20th century. They were both friends and colleagues, working separately and together to document and preserve folk music from Hungary and its surrounding regions. The music they collected strongly influenced their own compositions. Decca was one of the first major record companies […]

Collected on a single CD are István Kertész’s complete orchestral recordings of Kodály’s music together with the choral song, ‘The Peacock’ which precedes the ‘Peacock Variations’. For thrill, swagger and colour – not to mention Decca’s state-of-the-art sound – these recordings set a benchmark by which all others will be measured. Reviewing the recordings of the […]