The Swedish-Russian soprano, Elisabeth Söderström, made several landmark recordings for Decca – operas by Janacek, the complete songs of Rachmaninov and Sibelius both of which were recorded with Vladimir Ashkenazy. With Ashkenazy too she recorded songs by Chopin and her lyric/dramatic soprano fully captures the range of these songs, from tenderness to pathos. Ashkenazy is […]

This generously compiled CD brings together two great sopranos – Hildegard Behrens and Elly Ameling – in ravishing French music for the voice and orchestra.  The entire Ameling/de Waart recording (Ravel, Duparc, Debussy) is coupled with the Berlioz cycle, the former making a welcome return to the catalogue after a long absence and showcasing the […]

The take-over of Hungary and Czechoslovakia by their respective Communist governments a few years after the end of World War II had one curious side-effect: it proved to be the greatest event that ever occurred in the world of Haydn scholarship. In Hungary, the vast Esterházy Archives, previously closed to all except the very occasional […]

Christmas in Leipzig, 1723 Advent was a time of penitence in the Lutheran as in other Christian traditions. In Leipzig, the first Sunday in Advent was treated with some pomp as the beginning of the church year, and the service included a cantata. But on the other three Sundays, music was simple and the only […]

This must surely be a unique event in recording history! In 1959, Arthur Grumiaux went into the studios to overdub – as both violinist and pianist – the Mozart and Brahms Violin Sonatas on this recording. A bold venture of its kind in instrumental classical music and on two such different instruments, the recording has […]

In 1883, Max Bruch boarded a New York-bound steamer departing from Liverpool where he had been working as a conductor. During his American tour, he would conduct various choral societies but biographical material preceded his arrival in New York, making special mention of the first violin concerto: ‘It may well be said that since Mendelssohn’s […]

It is customary – although also somewhat arbitrary – to divide Beethoven’s career into early, middle and late periods. Be that as it may, his only completed violin concerto comes from the middle period. (Beethoven had attempted a violin concerto in 1790 but only 259 bars of it survive.) He began writing it in late […]

Dorati made two recordings both with the Concertgebouw, of Smetana’s epic cycle of tone poems ‘Má Vlast’. This first, very rare, mono recording, made in 1956, hardly sounds 50 years old – such was the acoustic of the Concertgebouw, not to mention the high quality of the recording itself. As for the performance, it’s a […]

Julius Katchen that colossus that bestrode the pianistic firmament for all too short a time, recorded the Brahms Handel and Paganini Variations three times, twice in mono and once in stereo. Surprisingly, these much-praised 1958 recordings have never before been issued on CD and are now being made available singly, on Eloquence.  All of Katchen’s […]

A delightful – and generous (80+ minutes) – coupling of two singular symphonies. Grieg’s Symphony in C minor is an early effort and the first ever recording of this work with the Bergen Symphony Orchestra and Karsten Andersen. It makes its first international appearance on CD. The charming ‘Rustic Wedding Symphony’, full of good humour […]

Two of Dvorák’s sunniest inspirations on CD together. The rare recording of the Violin Concerto with German violinist Edith Peinemann is once more made available and Kubelík’s recording of the Serenade was always one of the most highly recommended.

In 1976, Willi Boskovsky, unusually perhaps, made a lovely Grieg recording for Decca. About a third of it was briefly issued in the 1980s on Decca’s ‘Headline’ series but now, for the first time, we offer the whole record with the bonus of Stanley Black’s recording of the four ‘Lyric Pieces’ (on CD for the […]