Overshadowed by his father, Michael Haydn penned some delectable music and here are father and son on a single disc of Violin Concertos, completed with two Mozart ‘movements’.

Grumiaux was an inveterate chamber musician and together with his Grumiaux Trio as well as selected soloists, delivers sublime, unforced yet probing performances of works by Mozart and Schubert.

Kertész’ orchestral Mozart has been well documented on Eloquence with many releases appearing on CD for the first time. Now, restored to the catalogue, is his dramatic, muscular reading of the ‘Requiem’. Stretching to 79 minutes, the disc is filled out with selections from the composer’s Masonic Music, with the ‘Maurerische Trauermusik’ bearing an uncanny resemblance […]

Two slimmer works of Austro-German chamber repertoire – Mozart’s popular ‘Kegelstatt’ (Skittles) Trio and Weber’s lesser known but quite virtuoso, Flute Trio, preface Brahms’s magnificent Horn Trio on these rare L’Oiseau-Lyre recordings from The Melos Ensemble. All represent first releases on CD.

Extremely rare, Ansermet’s Mozart recordings for Decca are now released on a 2CD set. The very diversity of the works makes for an interesting Mozart/Ansermet concert, led by an aristocratic reading of the ‘Prague’ Symphony and continuing with the second concerto with principal SRO flautist, André Pepin and a sublime account of the motet ‘Exsultate, […]

The stunning ‘Covent Garden Anniversary Album’ released complete for the first time on CD, coupled with Solti’s firecracker accounts of Overtures and Preludes. Soloists include a range of 1960s Covent Garden stalwarts, – Carlyle, Sutherland, Veasey, Minton, Shuard, Collier, Gobbi, Evans, Pears and Ward; and conductors – Downes, Bonynge, Walton and Goodall. Nearly 160 minutes […]

This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Both Clarinet Quintets on this disc are late works of the respective composers and both were inspired by […]

This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Those who campaign against background music in shops, restaurants, hotel lobbies and lifts do not have history on […]

This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Five titles were released in September and the remaining five are released this month. This release forms a […]

This recording forms part of a series of reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Five titles were released in September and the remaining five are released this month. Receiving their first international […]

Mozart’s Symphonies Nos. 13-16 date from a period when the composer was devoting a great deal of his time to symphonic writing, and are particularly interesting from the light they shed on his gradual moulding of the essentially lightweight opera sinfonia to the weightier symphonic manner of Haydn and his Viennese contemporaries. They were penned […]

During the 18th century, it was common for noblemen to employ numbers of musicians to entertain themselves and their guests, and to add dignity and colour to occasions of Church and State. Music was frequently written to form a pleasant background to dinners and parties. Serious or complex music would clearly have been inappropriate for […]