The Vienna State Opera resumed its performing schedule very soon after the end of the fighting over the Austrian capital in 1945. As the ‘House on the Ring’ had been destroyed by direct hits, the company had to move to the Theater an der Wien though it had been closed since 1938 and was therefore […]

Certain rhythms seem to flow naturally for certain people. Shakespeare could probably have held a conversation in iambic pentameters and, when it comes to music, you can find many national preferences: the tango for Argentinians, the samba for Brazilians, the polka for Czechs, the mazurka for Poles, the czárdás for Hungarians, and so on. The […]

Erich Kleiber was one of Georg Solti’s idols and it was a Kleiber performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony that transformed his life and was the catalyst in his decision to become a conductor – a decision he made at the age of fourteen. The Schubert recording comes from one of only two recording sessions with […]

This collection of overtures – many of them appearing internationally on Decca CD for the first time – comes from the very start of Georg Solti’s recording career. That for Beethoven’s ‘Egmont’ was, in fact, his first recording as conductor, issued as a 78rpm record. The two Rossini overtures were issued as a 45rpm and […]

The Dutchman, Arnold van Mill (1921–1996), never enjoyed the international fame of his German contemporary, Gottlob Frick or the younger Martti Talvela and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Yet at the height of his formidable powers in the 1950s and 60s, he had few rivals for rotund depth and sonority of tone (with what Hope-Wallace called ‘double bass […]

Choreographer, George Balanchine, gave many gifts to the American people – and to the New York City Ballet – but the most typically American and sparkling of these gifts was the ballet, ‘Stars and Stripes’ which was premiered in 1958 and has been revived many times since. Sousa’s music was adapted and assembled into a 30-minute […]

Beginning in 1961, Georg Solti enjoyed a ten-year tenure as Music Director of London’s Covent Garden Opera Company where he raised performance standards while giving British singers more prominence than ever before. These changes were not lost on Buckingham Palace and in 1968, Covent Garden earned the right to be renamed ‘The Royal Opera’. With […]

Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And in the fourth volume, Music of the Night, there’s the ‘Barcarolle’ from Offenbach’s ‘Tales of Hoffmann’, slow movements from String Serenades by Mozart, Dvorak and Suk and of course, Chopin’s night music, celebrated by his popular D flat major Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2.

Aromatherapy, the quiet moments of classical music. And the seventh volume is a collection of music inspired by the countryside. This album takes a tour of many and varied landscapes beginning with the English countryside as seen through the eyes of Vaughan Williams, coupled with the Vienna Woods, in Johann Strauss II’s popular waltz, France’s […]

A fun collection of American classics with all those classic ‘pops’ from the ‘Pink Panther’ theme to ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ on a single CD. The performances are simply dazzling with all the pizzazz you’d expect from the man of the movies, John Williams.

Written to entertain a certain, Count Keyserlingk, in his waking hours, Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ is a tour de force of keyboard writing and this represents one of its greatest recordings. Also on the programme are two popular ‘Fantasies’ plus the jolly ‘Italian Concerto’.

A showcase of some of Vivaldi’s most popular concertos for wind instruments. From the many hundreds of concertos he wrote, the selection represented here, features some of his most lyrical and most energetic. Needless to say, the performances are classics of their kind. I Musici’s Vivaldi recordings over several years for Philips, from which these performances […]