Composing and story-telling are not unrelated but Albéniz was as adept as any Scheherazade at both! For many, his masterpiece was ‘Iberia’, a set of piano pieces composed near the end of his life. It contains twelve ‘impressions’ (the composer’s word) of Spain and is organised into four books of three pieces each. Although they […]

This release gathers together – under the perceptive and sympathetic musicianship of Ernest Ansermet – a selection of music by (and refashioned by) Ottorino Respighi with a very high quotient of colour, atmosphere, rhythmic vitality and touching lyricism. ‘The Fountains of Rome’ and ‘The Pines of Rome’ are two-thirds of the composer’s Roman Trilogy (the third […]

All of the few Britten recordings made by Eugene Goosse in 1953, have now been released on Decca Eloquence. Remodelled on themes he wrote as a boy, the ‘Simple Symphony’s’ undeniable charm and charisma have ensured it a constant place in repertoire enjoyed not only by children but by adults too. Much the same goes […]

To the delightfully muddled ‘Marriage of Figaro’-like plot of  ‘El amor brujo’, Ansermet brings an earthy sensuality and piquant wit. Ansermet recorded ‘El sombrero del tres picos’ twice and while the later recording with Teresa Berganza has rarely been out of the catalogue, this earlier mono, 1952 recording with Suzanne Danco is rare and much sought-after, not […]

Mozart dubbed him ‘mere mechanicus’ and with that musical curse, Clementi was, for long, doomed to piano student exercises and the occasional sonata movement for examinations. Yet, he had a remarkable career in London where he settled for most of his life and was fiscally in far better shape than Mozart with whom he once […]

Confidence, energy, brashness, terseness and humour: these five words succinctly characterize Beethoven’s early piano sonatas. However, with Op. 10 No. 3’s D minor Largo e mesto, a new quality – soul-bearing depth – comes into play – and settles in for the remainder of Beethoven’s creative life. During the late 1970s, when VladimirAshkenazy’s integral Beethoven […]

‘When he is at his best he plays more beautifully than any of us,’ Alfred Brendel told William Steinberg and described Kempff as ‘an Aeolian harp, ever ready to respond to whatever interesting wind blew his way’. Brendel chose Kempff’s 1953 Decca recording of Schubert’s A minor Sonata, D.845, for inclusion in Philips’ monumental ‘Great […]

As both composer and performing virtuoso, the piano was central to Beethoven’s life. However, his relationship with the instrument turned out to be a love-hate affair and few, if any models satisfied him. He wrote to the piano manufacturer, Johann Streicher that ‘the pianoforte is still the least studied and least developed of all instruments’. […]

Antony Rooley writes: ‘Since 1963 I had been spending many hours in the British Library studying the sixteenth-century English lute manuscripts … what a unique collection! The “Jane Pickering Lute Book”, “The John Sturt Lute Book”, “The Mynshall Lute Book” – all collections of one individual’s personal choice of repertoire, each with unique information on […]

Christmas Eve 1974 was a nightmare for the inhabitants of Darwin (in Australia’s Northern Territory) when it was destroyed by a violent cyclone. A Darwin Appeal Fund was launched and a month later, on 25 January 1975, Richard Bonynge conducted a fund-raising concert at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The idea was that of […]

Anthony Rooley writes: ‘In the mid-1970s this humble lute-player had theatrical pretensions! I realised quite early on in my performing career that audiences generally needed more help to “get inside” the beautiful obscure music I was discovering and if their appetite was to be fostered, a new dimension in the manner of presentation had to […]

This set of three CDs contains the complete ‘Chansonnier Cordiforme’, perhaps the most beautiful of all surviving music manuscripts whose first owner was Jean de Montchenu (d. 1497). It was compiled during the 1470s and contains 43 songs from the preceding 30 years by Dufay, Binchois, Ockeghem, Busnoys and other composers of the time. This […]