This collection of overtures – many of them appearing internationally on Decca CD for the first time – comes from the very start of Georg Solti’s recording career. That for Beethoven’s ‘Egmont’ was, in fact, his first recording as conductor, issued as a 78rpm record. The two Rossini overtures were issued as a 45rpm and […]
The Dutchman, Arnold van Mill (1921–1996), never enjoyed the international fame of his German contemporary, Gottlob Frick or the younger Martti Talvela and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Yet at the height of his formidable powers in the 1950s and 60s, he had few rivals for rotund depth and sonority of tone (with what Hope-Wallace called ‘double bass […]
Choreographer, George Balanchine, gave many gifts to the American people – and to the New York City Ballet – but the most typically American and sparkling of these gifts was the ballet, ‘Stars and Stripes’ which was premiered in 1958 and has been revived many times since. Sousa’s music was adapted and assembled into a 30-minute […]
Beginning in 1961, Georg Solti enjoyed a ten-year tenure as Music Director of London’s Covent Garden Opera Company where he raised performance standards while giving British singers more prominence than ever before. These changes were not lost on Buckingham Palace and in 1968, Covent Garden earned the right to be renamed ‘The Royal Opera’. With […]
Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And in the fourth volume, Music of the Night, there’s the ‘Barcarolle’ from Offenbach’s ‘Tales of Hoffmann’, slow movements from String Serenades by Mozart, Dvorak and Suk and of course, Chopin’s night music, celebrated by his popular D flat major Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2.
Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And the seventh volume is a collection of music inspired by the countryside. This album takes a tour of many and varied landscapes beginning with the English countryside as seen through the eyes of Vaughan Williams, coupled with the Vienna Woods, in Johann Strauss II’s popular waltz, France’s […]
A fun collection of American classics with all those classic ‘pops’ from the ‘Pink Panther’ theme to ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ on a single CD. The performances are simply dazzling with all the pizzazz you’d expect from the man of the movies, John Williams.
Written to entertain a certain, Count Keyserlingk, in his waking hours, Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ is a tour de force of keyboard writing and this represents one of its greatest recordings. Also on the programme are two popular ‘Fantasies’ plus the jolly ‘Italian Concerto’.
A showcase of some of Vivaldi’s most popular concertos for wind instruments. From the many hundreds of concertos he wrote, the selection represented here, features some of his most lyrical and most energetic. Needless to say, the performances are classics of their kind. I Musici’s Vivaldi recordings over several years for Philips, from which these performances […]
Ballet music was very much part of the great operas, sometimes inserted later for a bit of relief from the drama. Together with popular overtures – Rossini’s ‘Thieving Magpie’, Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ – this is a collection of some of those best-loved instrumental moments, some of which have even eclipsed the whole opera in popularity.
Two of Beethoven’s most popular middle-period String Quartets are coupled here in critically-acclaimed performances for Deutsche Grammophon by the Amadeus Quartet.
Debussy’s ‘Preludes’ represent one of the great cultural ‘events’ of the 20th century, exploring both the vivid and near-invisible colours of the piano. A feast of sound and sensations, this recording is unique in presenting all 24 ‘Preludes’ on a single disc.
