A new-world virtuoso with old-world musicianship: the complete Decca recordings of JOSHUA BELL, capturing the first decade of the violinist’s career on record. Decca signed the nineteen-year-old Joshua Bell in 1986 on the basis of privately made concerto tapes. Bell had first picked up a violin at the age of four, but he had been […]

“We all envied her, because all that we had to struggle so hard to achieve seemed so natural and self-evident to her because she knew how to sing from the heart” said Elisabeth Schwarzkopf of her colleague IRMGARD SEEFRIED. Collected here are Seefried’s complete recital recordings for Deutsche Grammophon as well as highlights from her […]

A BRAND NEW RECORDING FROM WOLFGANG HOLZMAIR. ‘For me,’ Wolfgang Holzmair once remarked, ‘the song is a continuation of speech – a higher form of expressing words and thoughts.’ Over the course of three decades, the Austrian baritone has been true to his own belief in a stream of recitals and recordings of the Lieder, […]

Newly remastered and compiled for the first time, the complete Decca recital albums of Irma Kolassi are now available on this 4CD set from Eloquence. Born in Greece but raised in Paris,she  began her career as a pianist until her ‘richly regal’ (The Times) mezzo-soprano was discovered. As a vocal coach in Athens, she worked […]

Belgian violinist, Arthur Grumiaux, brings his sublime artistry to four French compositions from the nineteenth century, some inspired by aspects of Spain, including Lalo’s five-movement ‘Symphonie espagnole’ and Ravel’s spicy ‘Tzigane’.

An intriguing, evocative and exotic recital in which Janet Baker joins The Melos Ensemble for a journey through some of the twentieth century’s most alluring French compositions for voice and chamber ensemble.

From Roussel’s delightful tribute to the animal kingdom in ‘Le festin de l’araignée’ via two of Dukas’ symphonic masterpieces (‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ in state-of-the-art sound)  to Chausson’s powerful and massive Symphony in B flat, this generous anthology in the ‘Decca Ansermet Legacy’ features the conductor in music he knew intimately and performed inimitably.

The brief but close friendship between Chausson and Debussy was based, it would seem, on the attraction of opposites. The bourgeois, god-fearing, happily married Chausson, living on inherited money in a spacious apartment on the fashionable Boulevard de Courcelles, was free to pursue high-minded, respectable projects like his Symphony in B flat, declaring his allegiance […]