In the 1960s and 70s, Claudio Abbado made several recordings for Decca – orchestral works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bruckner, as well as 20th-century repertoire by Hindemith, Janácek and Prokofiev. This recording is part of that legacy and there are plenty of magical touches – real swagger in the finale of the Seventh Symphony, dashing […]
Both Pascal Rogé and Lorin Maazel were one of the mainstays of the Decca roster for several years, the former famed for the clarity of his vision in much French music, the latter recording vasts tracts of repertoire with both the Vienna Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra, in often white-hot performances. The Franck Symphony blazes […]
The Eloquence/Ansermet journey continues with a much-anticipated and unique set: the early Stravinsky/Ansermet Decca discography with recordings made in the decade from 1946–1955, with, as a bonus, the hitherto unissued-on-CD recording of the Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss, recorded in 1962. The detailed booklet notes by Richard Kaplan are supplemented with full-page reproductions of many […]
Two beloved Romantic orchestral works in stellar performances, return to the catalogue in beautiful transfers. Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), often bemoaned the fact that he was associated with the French and Russian repertoires to the exclusion of music from outside of those traditions. He could hardly help it; after all, it was Monteux who conducted the […]
By 1958, Decca had been recording in stereo for four years, regularly sending out two production teams, one to make the stereo master, the other the mono master. Each team of producer and engineer worked independently of the other to produce the optimum sound for their system. In 1958, to launch their new stereo series […]
Chopin’s mazurkas are unique in that they occupied him throughout the course of his career. He wrote nearly sixty of them. The first was written when he was still a teenager and the last was written in 1849, the year of his death. By the time he had completed the four mazurkas that comprise Op. […]
The potential of music as a means of adding dignity and grandeur to state occasions has surely been lost on a few rulers in history. Portraits of antique kings and queens are more often admired (or the reverse) for their artistic qualities, as opposed to the enhancement in the status of their subjects they were […]
Peter Maag (1919-2001) was born in Switzerland to a musical family. After studies in theology and philosophy and an early career as a pianist, he was encouraged to conduct. In that field, his mentors included Ernest Ansermet and, above all, Wilhelm Furtwängler. His success as a conductor grew throughout the late 1940s and 50s, and […]
Like the Beethoven symphonies, his concertos form a cornerstone of the standard classical repertoire and collected together here, on four discs, are all his major concertos in stellar performances. From the Haydnesque first concertos, to the serene calm, poise and beauty of the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto, to the swagger of the […]
The two books of ‘Goyescas’ constitute Granados’ best and most durable as well as his best-known, music. Subtitled ‘Los majos enamorados’ (Young men in love), they are highly imaginative transcriptions into music of the tapestries and pictures of Francisco Goya (1746-1828), the wild and demonic genius who with Velasquez is usually thought of as one of the […]
Anthony Rooley writes: ‘“Amorous Dialogues” perfectly describes this unusual repertoire – although the variations on the theme of erotic love familiar to all of us tells the basic story of amatory exploits, desires and dreams in fresh ways. For example, can we be expected to believe that “He” doesn’t know what a kiss is and […]
During the 1960s, Louis Halsey, together with the Elizabethan Singers and The Louis Halsey Singers, made a number of recordings of British choral music for Decca. Three LPs devoted to the music of Parry, Elgar, Stanford and Delius and of folk song settings by a range of British composers, are here collected on this 2CD […]
