An idiomatic recording of Strauss’ Fledermaus boasts a stellar cast, in a warmly recorded account of this work.

For their 1989 festival, the committee of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir invited Dame Kiri Te Kanawa to join the Choir and the Utah Symphony Orchestra under maestro Julius Rudel. The choice of repertoire remained open and Dame Kiri selected a highly appropriate program of inspirational works that she could share with the choir and its […]

On the face of it, the Strauss family would seem to symbolise everything that is late-nineteenth-century Austrian. It was not always so: the grandfather of Johann Strauss I was not only Hungarian but Jewish and had been part of the wave of immigrants from Hungary attracted by Vienna’s enduring prosperity. Johann I himself, made every […]

Famous for his waltzes and polkas, the popularity of Johann Strauss has endured, not just compositions he wrote himself but music arranged by others. Strangely enough, for one of the greatest composers of dance music, he never composed a ballet. This album couples two such arrangements, both for the ballet. Antal Doráti’s arrangement, entitled ‘Graduation […]

When Vladimir Horowitz died in 1989, many music-lovers bemoaned the passing of ‘the last Romantic’ – an allusion to a bigger-than-life and subjective brand of pianism more typical of the first part of the 20th century than of its close. But was Horowitz really ‘the last’? When Jorge Bolet died a year later, the phrase […]

A thrilling collection of Overtures and Preludes (with some popular orchestral pieces thrown in for good measure) from Zubin Mehta. As a showman of the best variety, his recordings remain one of the Decca catalogue’s richest legacies with more than half of this collection released on CD for the first time.

Herbert von Karajan turns his attention to the swaggering pomp of favourite marches by the ‘other’ Strauss family and many others in this good natured and emblazoned romp.

Light opera and musical theatre rub shoulders in this delightful compendium of favourites from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. With a few exceptions, such as Lehár’s ‘Merry Widow’, many of the operettas from which these songs and arias are taken are largely forgotten and seldom performed but their ‘hits’ remain evergreen. This reissue includes the […]

During the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Decca recorded a number of albums of overtures with some of its key conductors. Many of these were singled out by the press for their terrific sound quality (the fabled ‘Decca Sound’) and for their often adventurous programming. Some of them also included entr’actes and intermezzi. Prized as collectors’ […]

‘Rita Streich, famed for her peerless coloratura, for her Queen of the Night and her performances of Olympia in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Blonde in Die Entführung aus dem Serail; Rita Streich, often dubbed a ‘singing nightingale’ also took time out from a busy career to record miniatures. Several LPs, combined over two (now deleted) Deutsche […]

Several countries have their light operas: the British their Gilbert and Sullivan, the Spanish their zarzuelas, the French their operettes. All of these display quite tight-knit styles but the operetta tradition of Austria and specifically Vienna, is more diffuse, reflecting the differing styles of folk music found in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The world of […]