For the first century of its history, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam had only four principal conductors and it was the second and fourth, Willem Mengelberg and Bernard Haitink who enjoyed a truly international reputation. Previous issues on Eloquence from Haydn (476 8483) to Debussy (464 6362) have shed light on the recordings made […]

The Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti had already made several recordings in the US with various orchestras for the Mercury label when Philips engaged him to begin working in the studio with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. There had been thrilling accounts of Tchaikovsky from both Minneapolis and Chicago and so it was to be […]

‘I think that every art is an art of authority but between “authoritarian” and “dictatorial” there is a vast difference.’ So remarked the Hungarian conductor, Antal Doráti, towards the end of a long career which included, near its beginning, almost a decade spent working closely with orchestras in The Hague and Amsterdam. That work, very […]

One of three complementary albums which celebrate the art of the Hungarian pianist, Andor Foldes, in the music of Beethoven, this Eloquence release pairs an eventful journey through the composer’s sonatas with his excursions into shorter and lighter repertoire. Taken by itself, the release would serve as an ideal introduction to Beethoven’s piano music. Foldes […]

This one-off partnership on record between the mercurial Argentinean pianist and scholarly Italian conductor, may have looked unlikely on paper but it struck sparks in early Beethoven as the critical response at the time recognised. Martha Argerich is, as Gramophone’s reviewer acknowledged in September 1986, a brilliant technician ‘but there is also a fantastic streak […]

Born and bred in the city, Karl Münchinger founded the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in the summer of 1945 and it was with this ensemble that he made recordings of Bach and other Baroque and early Classical repertoire (for Decca) that would be staples of the catalogue for decades to come. He was among the first […]

Back in 1950, August Wenzinger was flying the flag for Telemann at a time when the composer’s sheer fertility of invention defeated most musicians and listeners (perhaps it still does). He noted that the composer’s creative power was to be found in his personal motto, ‘Pleasure and diligence’: qualities to be appreciated in abundance in […]

Although Alicia de Larrocha was justly crowned in her own lifetime as the Queen of Spanish piano music, the larger-scale Romantic concertos were also within her repertoire during the first half of her long career until her finger-span could not accommodate the outsize hand-stretches required by Rachmaninov’s music in particular. To such works as Eloquence […]

A series of reissues on Eloquence has served to remind listeners around the world of the mastery of Alicia de Larrocha in repertoire ranging far beyond her native Spain, from Bach to Rachmaninov (including the Third Concerto with the LSO and André Previn, available on 482 0725). However, as Fanfare magazine noted in 1990, ‘her dominance […]

The ‘fresh, beautiful and critically underpraised’ voice (Gramophone) of Pilar Lorengar is celebrated here on an album of operatic arias, originally issued in 1980 by Decca as a portrait of the Spanish soprano who had entranced audiences on both sides of the Atlantic for three decades. ‘Our Pilar’as she was known affectionately at the Deutsche […]

When Pilar Lorengar died, a little over 20 years ago, at the age of 68 in her adopted city of Berlin, the tributes were unanimous for ‘one of the most beautiful voices heard in the post-war era’ (The Independent). She had grown up in Zaragoza and always treasured her introduction to the musical stage, practically […]

‘Jansen is Pelléas,’ wrote Eduardo Arnosi in a love-letter to Roger Desormière’s still-unsurpassed first recording (Opera magazine, September 1999) and few would demur. There was, however, much more to Jacques Jansen than the refined ardour and spontaneity of this 1941 recording. Just over a decade later, Decca producer, John Culshaw, spent a day in Paris […]