The three 2CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.Ansermet’s recording of ‘The Nutcracker’ is in a league of its own, and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. Refined, yet passionate, many of the pieces on these recordings make their first international appearance […]

The three 2-CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.  Ansermet’s recording of The Nutcracker is in a league of its own and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. Refined, yet passionate, many of the […]

The three 2CD Tchaikovsky/Ansermet sets, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, represent his complete Tchaikovsky recordings for Decca.  Ansermet’s recording of The Nutcracker is in a league of its own and many will find fascinating his own sequencing of numbers from Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. Refined, yet passionate, many of the […]

Making its first international appearance on CD, is Ansermet’s complete recording of a favourite ballet score – ‘Coppélia’ – its toy-box effects deliciously captured by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande. Ansermet only recorded selections from ‘Sylvia’ and they appear here, together with the rare 1960 recording of the second ‘Daphnis et Chloé’ suite which, for sheer […]

As a companion to the 2CD set of ‘Paris’ Symphonies, this CD presents the rest of Ansermet’s Haydn recordings – two symphonies (recorded in 1965), the Trumpet Concerto (dating from 1957) and as a pendant, the Hummel Trumpet Concerto (recorded in 1968). The readings are certainly on a larger scale than that which we expect […]

In 1960, the Stuttgart-born conductor Karl Münchinger (1915-1990), made a Decca recording of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon and Gigue’ that assured the piece its immortality in years to come. Münchinger recorded extensively for Decca with his Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra). Moderate-size forces, rhythmic sprightliness and judicious ornamentation were the hallmarks of his recordings of 17th and 18th-century […]

One of the most entertaining composer autobiographies is Miklós Rózsa’s Double Life, first published in 1982 – the same year that he scored his last film (the Steve Martin vehicle Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid). The book’s title is an allusion to Rózsa’s twofold career as a composer of music for the concert hall and for […]

Georg Solti studied piano with Bartók and although they never developed a close personal relationship, Solti was always in awe of the composer’s dedication and intensity. In 1937, he was also page-turner for the first performance of the Sonata for Two Pianos & Percussion given by the composer and his wife, Ditta Bartók-Pasztory. Bartók’s music […]

Light opera and musical theatre rub shoulders in this delightful compendium of favourites from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. With a few exceptions, such as Lehár’s ‘Merry Widow’, many of the operettas from which these songs and arias are taken are largely forgotten and seldom performed but their ‘hits’ remain evergreen. This reissue includes the […]

For Claude Debussy, the imaginative life was real life. A musical pantheist and revolutionary, he sensed the very heart of the centre of natural phenomena, their ‘inscape’ or essence; and seeking, as he put it, to ‘express the inexpressible’, he longed to liberate music ‘from the barren traditions that stifle it’. Such fantasy and freedom […]

During the war, Falla wrote a pantomime ballet titled ‘El Corregidor y la Molinera’ (‘The Magistrate and the Miller’s Wife’) based on a novella by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes, was at the 1917 premiere. Liking what he saw, Diaghilev imagined that the ballet, with modifications, would be perfect […]

The Romanian soprano, Virginia Zeani made only two studio recordings with a major label: these recordings for Decca of coloratura arias conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, and Puccini arias conducted by Franco Patanè. Generally, she favoured the spontaneity of live recordings. She did not have an agent and was not an active self-promoter which may account […]