This final volume in an exploration of the art of Irmgard Seefried, encompasses selections (arias and duets) from her oratorio recordings (Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion’, Haydn’s ‘Creation’ and Gounod’s ‘St. Cecilia Mass’) as well as the first issue on CD of her recording of Bach’s ‘Wedding’ Cantata. Seefried’s tonal purity, grace of phrase and care […]

Seefried’s radiance and imaginative strength made her a cherishable Lieder singer over an enterprisingly wide repertoire. The songs of Hugo Wolf, less frequently programmed in the 1940s and 50s than today, were something of a Seefried speciality. In her 1953 recording with Erik Werba of 22 songs from the ‘Italienisches Liederbuch’ (made five years before […]

Seefried’s radiance and imaginative strength made her a cherishable Lieder singer over an enterprisingly wide repertoire. She always championed the songs of Hugo Wolf, far less frequently programmed in the 1940s and 50s than today. In 1953, Seefried recorded with her regular pianist partner, Erik Werba, 22 numbers from Italienisches Liederbuch. Five years later she […]

Borodin’s First Symphony was one of his earliest large-scale works and shows a great increase of technical skill over anything he had done before. Of course, it was a brave decision on Borodin’s part to undertake a symphony when he had little experience of large-scale form and none of orchestration. The influence of Schumann is […]

Decca Eloquence continues its exploration of the recordings of Pierre Monteux with a coupling of two works that invoke the supernatural. Monteux’s brilliant, yet cultivated late-1950s readings of these works offer much pleasure and both are released internationally on Decca CD for the first time.

Although overshadowed by the more celebrated second recording of Otello that Mario del Monaco and Renata Tebaldi made with Karajan (1960), many feel this earlier (1954) recording features both protagonists in fresher voice, and Alberto Erede and his Santa Cecilia forces really pack a punch.

Heralded by a priceless photo of Del Monaco, this classic 1954 recording of ‘Rigoletto’ is restored to the catalogue. Recorded about the same time as Erede’s ‘Otello’ sessions (also with Del Monaco and Protti), Del Monaco gives a powerful rendition of the Duke and Hilda Gueden’s crystalline purity gives Gilda all the innocence and largesse […]

Mozart’s precocious genius was as a keyboard player and composer and his father proudly paraded these gifts of his all over Europe; but Wolfgang also played the violin – Leopold’s own instrument, for which he had written a tutor that was to become famous – and throughout the years he lived at home he was […]

After the wealth of string quartets produced by the composers of High Classicism – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert – the leading figures of Romanticism were somewhat daunted by the expectations of their public. Felix Mendelssohn achieved a respectable total of six quartets but the three notable composers represented in this program managed only nine […]

In his most famous orchestral composition, ‘Scheherazade’, Rimsky-Korsakov, like Beethoven in his ‘Pastoral’ Symphony before him, was more interested in evoking feelings and impressions than in spoon-feeding listeners a pre-digested program. So the titles he provided for its four movements were indicative rather than based on particular stories from the ‘Arabian Nights’. Pierre Monteux’s recording, […]

In May 1946, when Milan’s venerable La Scala theatre reopened after World War II, conductor Arturo Toscanini selected Renata Tebaldi then 24, to sing music by Rossini and Verdi for that watershed concert. ‘Ah, la voce d’angelo’ – the voice of an angel – was Toscanini’s reported verdict. In her heyday, she was known as […]

All three works on this CD feature the flute and all feature Pierre Monteux collaborating with his son, Claude. Bach composed some music for the recorder but it is outnumbered by his works for transverse flute which he called the ‘traversiere’. In his Orchestral Suite No. 2, Bach gave the ‘traversiere’ a starring role. Although […]