The stunning ‘Covent Garden Anniversary Album’ released complete for the first time on CD, coupled with Solti’s firecracker accounts of Overtures and Preludes. Soloists include a range of 1960s Covent Garden stalwarts, – Carlyle, Sutherland, Veasey, Minton, Shuard, Collier, Gobbi, Evans, Pears and Ward; and conductors – Downes, Bonynge, Walton and Goodall. Nearly 160 minutes […]
Ernest Ansermet’s view of Bartók was a lyrical one and his incredible ear brought out lines, sonorities and shape in this music that have rarely been equalled. Here, collected together on CD for the first time, are his complete Bartók recordings for Decca as part of the ongoing ‘Decca Ansermet Legacy’. They include some of […]
Issued collectively for the first time on Decca are the complete Berlioz recordings of Ernest Ansermet. Included too is the rehearsal for ‘Symphonie fantastique’ (in French) previously issued on LP only in the US and Japan. The set also offers excerpts from ‘La damnation de Faust’ (the ‘Danse des sylphes’ making its first international appearance […]
The Berlioz Symphonies in acclaimed performances by Daniel Barenboim – Fantastique: first international CD release; Roméo: a rare recording returns to the catalogue. And Lorin Maazel conducts a wonderful performance of ‘Harold en Italie’ – long unavailable on CD.
Verdi’s mighty operatic Requiem and Fauré’s more demure offering are stablemates in this collection of rare recordings of these masterpieces. Reissues of Paul van Kempen’s recordings on Eloquence have been garnering great critical plaudits and this is the first international release on CD of his recording of the Verdi, made for Philips in 1955 and […]
Vladimir Ashkenazy’s truly magical account of Mendelssohn’s most beautiful fairy music – ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – returns to the catalogue, coupled with another fantastical work, ‘The First Walpurgisnacht’, in a scintillating performance from Christoph von Dohnányi.
Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ was misunderstood at its premiere in 1875. The Opéra-Comique was a place where respectable families could be entertained and where virginal daughters could be introduced to blameless sons with marriage in mind. No one expected to see uncouth gypsies, dirty smugglers and vulgar cigarette girls on its stage, let alone unvarnished human passions […]
It used to be fashionable to include the music of Lalo in concert in the mid-20th century. At the start of the 21st century, however, his works has fallen completely into neglect, in France as much as elsewhere. This is a cruel injustice for music full of sensuality and very highly inspired, quality orchestration. This unique 2CD […]
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 […]
