‘Rodelinda’ stems from a period of great creativity in Handel’s life, 1724-25, following quickly on ‘Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano’ although it met with only moderate success. One of its first revivals was via the German Handel Society in the 1920s and then the Handel Opera Society revived it again, with a cast including Joan Sutherland, during […]

One of the most peerless Mozartians of our time, Felicity Lott, has been one of the foremost sopranos to essay the composer’s major roles in the opera house. Complementing these is her magnificent disc of concert arias as well as Mozart’s beloved motet ‘Exsultate, jubilate’ and arias from two of the composer’s lesser-known operas. The […]

‘Operatic justice’, writes J.B. Steane in his informative and amusing note for this album, ‘is a law unto itself, and the baritone has been prominent among its victims. Unlucky in love, he is seen in the most favourable light as a father-figure and is otherwise all too often the villain of the piece. He may […]

Jean-Baptiste Duval of the Venetian Republic’s French Embassy records that on Christmas Eve 1607, Midnight Mass in St. Mark’s was celebrated by the light of more than one thousand candles, sixty huge torches and silver lamps. He counted no less than eight ‘choirs’ of voices and instruments sounding back and forth across the gilded vaults […]

The story of the birth of Jesus more than two thousand years ago has been the source of inspiration for countless poets and musicians, as well as practitioners of other forms of art. The infant, born of a virgin in a lowly cattle shed, because there was no room in the inn; the angel of […]

Choirs and orchestras join for a beautiful celebration of 20th-century British Christmas favourites recorded in sumptuous Argo sound. Book-ended by two perennial favourites – Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Finzi’s In terra pax – this collection explores the subtle and radiant music of Howells, Warlock, Ireland and Holst, and includes an orchestral number […]

This is a gem of an album, containing not only some glorious and seldom heard pieces but is also the only available recorded version of ‘Soberana Maria’ (anon.). ‘A piece of heart-breaking beauty, sung exquisitely a capella’ wrote a reviewer on Amazon.com of this admirable album made in 1968 – one of Roger Norrington’s earliest recordings. […]

A favourite ballet all round the year, but a perennial at Christmas-time, Tchaikovsky’s evergreen Nutcracker has never perhaps received as luxurious a recorded performance as that of Charles Dutoit and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. The coupling – Aurora’s Dream – is a suite of dances, mostly from the last act of The Sleeping Beauty, […]

Arthur Fiedler took great pride in bringing classical music to the world at large. While Leonard Bernstein was busy with his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Fiedler and his Boston Pops Orchestra (most of the members drawn from the Boston Symphony) gave concerts of popular classics that became a fixture on America’s […]

A collection of hymns, carols and motets offers a broad perspective on the unaccompanied choral music of Christmas: its traditional liturgical texts, as reflected in reverent settings by Renaissance and modern masters; and the well- and lesser- known hymns and carols of the world in arrangements which preserve their ethnic and geographic origins. A much-sought […]

‘Once, As I Remember…’ is John Eliot Gardiner’s recreation of the story of Christmas based on the Springhead Christmas Play. A nativity play made up of music, speech, dance and mime took place almost every Christmas in the Millroom at Springhead, home of the Gardiner family in Fontmell Magna, Dorset. The actors were school-children, farmers, […]

Orchestral showpieces such as those grouped here were among the most obvious beneficiaries of the advances in recording technique pioneered by Decca from the late 1950s onwards. Works which may have seemed dauntingly complex to an earlier generation of gramophone collectors could now be captured with startling clarity, due in no small part to the […]