Kirsten Flagstad’s farewell to the role she made her own: a rarely reissued, newly remastered and extensively documented monument in the history of Wagner on record. As the first commercial recording of Wagner’s ‘Götterdämmerung’ this set would have lasting significance even without the presence of its undoubted star, the Norwegian soprano,Kirsten Flagstad, in her signature […]

Ruggiero Ricci is in his element in these virtuoso concertos and showpieces, with both the Tchaikovsky Concerto (with Sargent) and the Scherzo plus the Sibelius Violin Concerto, being released internationally on CD for the first time. The perceptive booklet notes by Tully Potter include a biography of Ricci and (sometimes wry!) comments by the violinist […]

In her autobiography (The Flagstad Manuscript, 1952), Kirsten Flagstad tells of the joy she experienced on finding when she began to give concerts in the United States that the Americans so took to the songs of her native country and particularly of Grieg. She herself had been brought up with them and even included some […]