This well-filled 2CD set – nearly 2 hours and 40 minutes long – presents Bartók’s major concertos (the Viola Concerto appears on another Eloquence CD). The three Piano Concertos appear in muscular and sumptuously recorded performances (one of the finest examples of Decca’s 1970s engineering at the venerated Kingsway Hall) by Pascal Rogé and Walter […]
The Decca Ansermet Legacy on Eloquence continues to garner the highest plaudits from publications all around the world. And the latest batch presents the maestro’s recordings of four key Austro-German Romantics: Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann, bringing together all of Ansermet’s Weber recordings for Decca. Weber’s overtures possess an irresistible panache, being a perfect blend […]
In 1958, work started on the great ‘Ring’ project with Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic at the helm of a crop of outstanding singers. For the first complete recording of Wagner’s tetralogy and for the first opera, ‘Das Rheingold’, Flagstad was engaged to sing a role she had never performed before, that of Fricka. Producer […]
The third volume of The Flagstad Recitals couples music by Wagner and Mahler. Flagstad’s LP of Wagner scenes recorded with Hans Knappertsbusch is complemented by the ‘Todesverkündigung’ from Act II of ‘Die Walküre’ with Sir Georg Solti as well as the ‘Immolation Scene’ from ‘Götterdämmerung’ from a Norwegian broadcast performance conducted by Øivin Fjeldstad. Also […]
The fourth volume in ‘The Flagstad Recitals’, comprises two LPs Kirsten Flagstad made with the London Philharmonic and Sir Adrian Boult in December 1956 (Bach and Handel: CD2) and April 1957 (Sacred Songs: CD1) at London’s Kingsway Hall. The Penguin Guide to bargain Compact Discs praised the ‘sacred pops’ CD for the ‘vivid projection’ of […]
The Decca Ansermet Legacy on Eloquence continues to garner the highest plaudits from publications all around the world. And the latest batch presents the maestro’s recordings of four key Austro-German Romantics: Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann bringing together all of Ansermet’s Mendelssohn and Schubert recordings for Decca. Adopting clarity and muscularity over homogeneity, Ansermet’s Mendelssohn […]
The Decca Ansermet Legacy on Eloquence continues to garner the highest plaudits from publications all around the world .And this batch presents the maestro’s recordings of four key Austro-German Romantics: Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann bringing together all of Ansermet’s Schumann recordings for Decca. Ansermet’s Schumann is generally unforced and relaxed with all but the Piano […]
Between 1958 and 1960, Flagstad served as general manager of the Norwegian National Opera which had been newly established the year before. From her home in Kristiansand, she travelled to many Norwegian churches and sang small concerts there. These concerts were the result of radio broadcasts and recordings of Norwegian hymns – or, more accurately […]
The first of four 2-CD ‘Flagstad Recitals’ features Kirsten Flagstad in Brahms and Schubert on CD1 as well as CD premieres of songs by Schumann (including her previously unpublished ‘Zum Schluss’), Strauss, Wolf and Sinding on CD2. Her great power and control placed her among those with the natural capacity for success in the ‘big’ […]
In her autobiography (The Flagstad Manuscript, 1952), Kirsten Flagstad tells of the joy she experienced on finding when she began to give concerts in the United States that the Americans so took to the songs of her native country and particularly of Grieg. She herself had been brought up with them and even included some […]
‘I’m a classical girl, you know,’ wrote the legendary soprano Kirsten Flagstad in her memoirs, ‘The Flagstad Manuscript’, co-authored with Louis Biancolli. ‘Whatever Wagner may be, other music gives a different satisfaction: the music of Gluck, for example, or Handel. It’s the precise and orderly mind of these composers that I think appeals to me. […]
Jorge Bolet was an avowed Romantic, happy to relax once the serious business of his recital was over. Like Moiseiwitsch, he could be mischievously enterprising, challenging his audience to guess the composer of this or that rare poetic jewel or confection or, like Rubinstein, he could affectionately confirm and recreate their favourites. With delightful old […]
