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 […]

The Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti had already made several recordings in the US with various orchestras for the Mercury label when Philips engaged him to begin working in the studio with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. There had been thrilling accounts of Tchaikovsky from both Minneapolis and Chicago and so it was to be […]

‘I think that every art is an art of authority but between “authoritarian” and “dictatorial” there is a vast difference.’ So remarked the Hungarian conductor, Antal Doráti, towards the end of a long career which included, near its beginning, almost a decade spent working closely with orchestras in The Hague and Amsterdam. That work, very […]

One of three complementary albums which celebrate the art of the Hungarian pianist, Andor Foldes, in the music of Beethoven, this Eloquence release pairs an eventful journey through the composer’s sonatas with his excursions into shorter and lighter repertoire. Taken by itself, the release would serve as an ideal introduction to Beethoven’s piano music. Foldes […]

This one-off partnership on record between the mercurial Argentinean pianist and scholarly Italian conductor, may have looked unlikely on paper but it struck sparks in early Beethoven as the critical response at the time recognised. Martha Argerich is, as Gramophone’s reviewer acknowledged in September 1986, a brilliant technician ‘but there is also a fantastic streak […]

Born and bred in the city, Karl Münchinger founded the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in the summer of 1945 and it was with this ensemble that he made recordings of Bach and other Baroque and early Classical repertoire (for Decca) that would be staples of the catalogue for decades to come. He was among the first […]

Back in 1950, August Wenzinger was flying the flag for Telemann at a time when the composer’s sheer fertility of invention defeated most musicians and listeners (perhaps it still does). He noted that the composer’s creative power was to be found in his personal motto, ‘Pleasure and diligence’: qualities to be appreciated in abundance in […]

Although Alicia de Larrocha was justly crowned in her own lifetime as the Queen of Spanish piano music, the larger-scale Romantic concertos were also within her repertoire during the first half of her long career until her finger-span could not accommodate the outsize hand-stretches required by Rachmaninov’s music in particular. To such works as Eloquence […]