As with his Seventh symphony, Bruckner began his Eighth without a commission and without any specific promise that it would be performed. Nowadays, it’s one of his most often performed symphonies. It also happens to be his longest symphony – one, with its sheer breath of scope, asks for the listener to adjust his or […]

Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble were one of the pioneering ensembles, inextricably associated with Mercury Living Presence and boasting some of the finest wind players in the United States. This rare recording which includes the much-requested ‘Lincolnshire Posy’, features seminal 20th-century music for this ensemble, not easily found elsewhere.

While Mozart is regularly touted as a teenage wonder, experts say there’s nothing he wrote as a teenager that could rival Mendelssohn’s Octet – a work beloved of audiences and ensembles alike. One of Decca’s earliest digital recordings was of the string orchestra version of this piece by the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Lusciously […]

This and the other two 2CD sets – 4800834 and 4800837 – represent all of Ansermet’s Prokofiev recordings for Decca (with the exception of a mono recording of the March & Scherzo from The Love for Three Oranges – the stereo version appears here).

The three 2CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.Ansermet’s recording of ‘The Nutcracker’ is in a league of its own, and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. Refined, yet passionate, many of the pieces on these recordings make their first international appearance […]

The three 2-CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.  Ansermet’s recording of The Nutcracker is in a league of its own and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. Refined, yet passionate, many of the […]

The three 2CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.  Ansermet’s recording of The Nutcracker is in a league of its own and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. Refined, yet passionate, many of the […]

Making its first international appearance on CD, is Ansermet’s complete recording of a favourite ballet score – ‘Coppélia’ – its toy-box effects deliciously captured by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande. Ansermet only recorded selections from ‘Sylvia’ and they appear here, together with the rare 1960 recording of the second ‘Daphnis et Chloé’ suite which, for sheer […]

As a companion to the 2CD set of ‘Paris’ Symphonies, this CD presents the rest of Ansermet’s Haydn recordings – two symphonies (recorded in 1965), the Trumpet Concerto (dating from 1957) and as a pendant, the Hummel Trumpet Concerto (recorded in 1968). The readings are certainly on a larger scale than that which we expect […]

In 1960, the Stuttgart-born conductor Karl Münchinger (1915-1990), made a Decca recording of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon and Gigue’ that assured the piece its immortality in years to come. Münchinger recorded extensively for Decca with his Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra). Moderate-size forces, rhythmic sprightliness and judicious ornamentation were the hallmarks of his recordings of 17th and 18th-century […]

One of the most entertaining composer autobiographies is Miklós Rózsa’s Double Life, first published in 1982 – the same year that he scored his last film (the Steve Martin vehicle Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid). The book’s title is an allusion to Rózsa’s twofold career as a composer of music for the concert hall and for […]

Georg Solti studied piano with Bartók and although they never developed a close personal relationship, Solti was always in awe of the composer’s dedication and intensity. In 1937, he was also page-turner for the first performance of the Sonata for Two Pianos & Percussion given by the composer and his wife, Ditta Bartók-Pasztory. Bartók’s music […]