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 […]
Two distinguished soloists – soprano Suzanne Danco and tenor Robert Tear – contribute to this disc of Schubert songs. Both of the composer’s ‘obbligato’ songs (‘Der Hirt auf dem Felsen’ and ‘Auf dem Strom’) are included as are five of Schubert’s most popular Lieder in recordings by Danco previously unreleased on CD. But at the centre […]
This collection brings together rarities and surprises from the Decca/Argo Britten discography, a collection notable as much for the infrequency with which much of this music is performed as it is for the fact that many of these are world-premiere recordings of Britten’s music. The source material itself is extremely rare and virtually every recording […]
Throughout Britten’s public career as the leading opera and song composer of his age, there have appeared, from time to time, small-scale works composed for more intimate occasions – the wedding anniversary of friends, for instance, a BBC feature program, songs for children, a chorus for a prisoner-of-war choir and – for his own use […]
Karl Münchinger recorded all the major orchestral and choral pieces by Bach for Decca, and over a period of some 30 years (from the Mono to the Digital eras), five of the Cantatas. All boast remarkable soloists from their eras. Suzanne Danco sings the two solo cantatas, BWV 51 and 202, recorded in 1953 and […]
