Between the controversial Mengelberg and the versatile Bernard Haitink, Eduard van Beinum played a less distinctive role as principal conductor of the Concertgebouw in the postwar years until his death in 1959 but it is difficult to overestimate the positive effect he had on that orchestra and the sincerity of his musicianship. Van Beinum described […]
The farewell performance of Dame Nellie Melba, world-famous prima donna of her day, on the stage of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where she had sung hundreds of times over an unprecedented span of 40 years, remains a justly famous occasion, of which recorded extracts have been reissued previously. What makes the present release […]
This highly appealing collection of light-orchestral classics, gathers up eighteen years in the history of one of the world’s most celebrated orchestras during the golden age of the LP. Ever since its foundation in 1883, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam has been blessed with a hall that to all intents and purposes, belongs to them. […]
A newly compiled anthology of Decca recordings on Eloquence, surveys the healthy state of Handel singing in England in the 1960s, before this music became the preserve of musicians and singers within the period-instrument movement. This generous (145-minute) collection is based around a pair of newly re-mastered recital albums made by the contralto, Bernadette Greevy […]
For years, admitted Sir Georg Solti to High Fidelity magazine in January 1967, ‘Mahler bored me. He came to me or I came to him, eight or nine years ago. Up till then his symphonies were all pieces and bits. Now I see their form, I love them. It is not enough to like music. […]
Throughout a career spanning over 60 years, Dame Moura Lympany was closely associated with the music of Rachmaninov. It began as an unlikely meeting of minds and fingers: what was this slight and beautiful young Englishwoman doing with music that needed the composer’s own huge hands to span its ninths and tenths, written by a […]
After the Fourth in 1961, the First in 1964 and the Second in 1966, the Ninth was the fourth of Mahler’s symphonies to be recorded for Decca by Sir Georg Solti. Symphonies 1, 2 and plus No. 3 from 1968, were all made with the London Symphony Orchestra but the cycle quickly expanded its horizons […]
The Lyric Opera of Chicago was founded as recently as 1954 but within two years it had secured the services of many operatic stars of the day who were doubtless reassured of the quality and warmth of reception at the company by the trailblazing US debut of Maria Callas as Norma in its first season. […]
Even while creating a sensation across the US with concerts in Chicago, Cleveland, New York and further afield, Rafael Kubelík recorded the four symphonies of Brahms with the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca (in stereo) in the 1950s. Long unavailable, they are here presented together for the first time on CD, in an economical 2CD package, […]
In several valuable and newly remastered releases under ‘The Decca Recitals’ banner, Eloquence has compiled tributes to several fine singers of the 1950s whose vocal personality particularly fitted the demands of art song: among them are Jacques Jansen (482 4603), Irma Kolassi (482 4637) and Oda Slobodskaya (480 3524). They are now joined by an […]
The Eloquence label has restored to modern circulation many recordings of the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet but few of them have been as overlooked as this pair of concertos which are now released internationally for the first time on CD, in new digital remasterings. French music found Ansermet in his element and he was a […]
For the first century of its history, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam had only four principal conductors and it was the second and fourth, Willem Mengelberg and Bernard Haitink who enjoyed a truly international reputation. Previous issues on Eloquence from Haydn (476 8483) to Debussy (464 6362) have shed light on the recordings made […]
