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Rimsky-Korsakov: The Snow Maiden

January 14, 2019

A first release on CD for the first recording in stereo of Rimsky-Korsakov’s enchanting springtime love-story. With this and six companion issues, Eloquence makes available for the first time on CD the seven complete Russian operas recorded in 1955 by Decca with the company of the Belgrade Opera. Fresh from a successful tour of Boris […]

Ansermet Encores

January 14, 2019

A generous compilation of short pieces either recorded individually or extracted from the Decca discography of Ernest Ansermet. Included is a complete ten-inch LP of encores entitled ‘Orchestral Favourites’ and containing pieces by Falla, Chabrier, Mussorgsky and Debussy. This dates from October 1955, near the beginning of Decca’s stereo catalogue whereas the rest of the […]

Nicolai Orloff – The Decca Recordings

October 29, 2018

The complete published Decca recordings of a fine but forgotten Russian pianist, previously unreleased on CD. A student of the legendary pedagogue Konstantin Igumnov, Nikolai Orloff, became a professor of piano himself at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1917, at the age of just 25. Having emigrated to Paris in 1922, he soon began to make […]

A Song for Christmas

October 29, 2018

Mantovani made his first Christmas single (White Christmas with Adeste Fideles for the B side) for Decca in October, 1952. A year later he recorded a further twelve numbers for ‘An Album of Christmas Music’ and it became a major seller in the 1950s. With the advent of stereo, in 1958, all fourteen numbers were […]

Mendelssohn: Overtures; Schubert: Rosamunde

October 29, 2018

Two original Decca releases of the Vienna Philharmonic in early-Romantic repertoire, freshly compiled and newly remastered. ‘I am an exponent of an old tradition,’ remarked Carl Schuricht. ‘I have nothing against the music of today but I feel it is important to rejuvenate the sense of tradition.’ This he did throughout a distinguished career which […]

Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 44-49

October 29, 2018

Fiery accounts of six symphonies from Haydn’s ‘Sturm und Drang’ period. Daniel Barenboim had been conducting the English Chamber Orchestra for 20 years when he made the first of the three Deutsche Grammophon LPs newly remastered and compiled on this Eloquence twofer. The familiarity tells in the crisp and dynamic response of the ECO to […]

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake; The Nutcracker

October 29, 2018

According to legend, Anatole Fistoulari (1907–1995), conducted an orchestra for the first time at the age of seven. Having moved to France in his twenties, he escaped to England after the fall of France in 1939 and based the rest of his career in the UK as a ballet specialist who became something of a […]

Tchaikovsky: The Queen of Spades

October 29, 2018

A first international release on CD for the first recording in stereo of Tchaikovsky’s tragic masterpiece of obsession. With this and six companion issues, Eloquence makes available for the first time on CD the seven complete Russian operas recorded in 1955 by Decca with the company of the Belgrade Opera. Fresh from a successful tour […]

Robert Irving – The Decca Recordings

September 21, 2018

Robert Irving: the pre-eminent ballet conductor of his day on home turf and vividly captured in Decca’s superbly life-like, late mono-sound with his complete recordings for that label. Despite bringing the orchestras of both The Royal Ballet and the New York City Ballet to celebrated peaks of brilliance in execution, the conductor Robert Irving left […]

Yvonne Minton sings Mahler

September 21, 2018

Minton · Solti · Mahler – the complete record of a supreme artistic partnership. For a memoir published in 2017, Yvonne Minton wrote that ‘Mahler’s music could have been written with Sir Georg and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in mind.’ She was too modest to speak of her own contribution, in which a superbly schooled […]

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin

September 21, 2018

A first release on CD for the first recording in stereo of Tchaikovsky’s operatic masterpiece. With this and six companion issues, Eloquence makes available for the first time on CD the seven complete Russian operas recorded in 1955 by Decca with the company of the Belgrade Opera. Fresh from a successful tour of ‘Boris Godunov’ […]

Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail; Overtures

September 21, 2018

The supreme exponent of Viennese Mozart and his first recording of Mozart’s ‘rescue opera’ set in a Turkish harem (Decca’s first opera to be issued on LP), coupled with a superbly stylish collection of overtures. Weber’s verdict on ‘Die Entführung’ – ‘the victory of youth in all its freshness’ – has hardly been challenged since […]