The partnership of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is possibly the most recorded of all partnerships in recorded classical music. This collection brings together three of their very first recordings: ‘A Recital’, ‘A Second Recital’ and ‘Italian Concertos’, the three LPs receiving their first complete release on CD. The first […]
The partnership of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is possibly the most recorded of all partnerships in recorded classical music. This collection brings together three of their earliest concerto recordings: ‘Baroque Trumpet Concertos, ‘Recital for Strings and ‘18th Century Flute Concertos’, the three LPs receiving their first complete release on CD. […]
Behind the stuffed shirts and the stiff upper lips of the Victorian era, dwelt some admirable spirits, none perhaps more admirable than Albert, Prince of Saxe, Coburg and Gotha, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria. Among this collection of songs by him are some which could take their place worthily in any recital of Lieder of […]
Long out of the catalogue, Marriner’s (Philips) recording of Bach’s B Minor Mass, with an array of splendid soloists, returns to circulation. Its coupling is the first release on CD of this recording of the deeply moving Cantata BWV 56 ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen’. It was one of two (extant) Bach cantatas for […]
‘Music All Powerful – Music to entertain Queen Victoria’ provides a delightful flashback of the British Royal Family and is the first release on CD of a delightful Argo LP. It offers solo songs, unaccompanied and accompanied choral songs and a handful of instrumental numbers such as would have been performed for and during Queen […]
Westminster Abbey is a royal church, founded in 1065 by King Edward the Confessor, who was buried in the original Norman building only a few days after its consecration. Almost exactly two centuries later, in 1269, his body was ‘translated’ or removed to its present resting-place in the shrine east of the High Altar. It […]
Roy Goodman’s recording of the Allegri Miserere (in David Willcocks’ edition, sung in English) was its first, made in March 1963. Although reissued countless times, the complete Argo recording from which it emanates – Evensong for Ash Wednesday – has never before been released complete. Consisting of hymns, psalms and readings, this is a regular […]
Sir Adrian Boult made a selection of Decca recordings in the 1950s and 60s ranging from Baroque repertoire (Bach, Handel) to the music of the 20th century – most notably the first eight Vaughan Williams symphonies. Coupled together for the first time on CD are his two major Handel recordings for Decca – of the […]
Although Bach wrote four (or five) settings of the Passions only two have survived; the St. Matthew Passion (Matthäus-Passion) and the St John Passion. The St. Matthew Passion was probably first performed on Good Friday (11 April) 1727 in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach was the Kantor of the School and Directoris Chori musici […]
In 1957, Fritz Wunderlich together with colleagues Friederike Sailer, Margarete Bence and August Messthaler, set down complete versions of three Bach choral works – the Magnificat, the Cantata BWV 31 and the Easter Oratorio. They were recorded for Philips in France. Both, the oratorio and the cantata Der Himmel lacht, Die Erde jubilieret (‘The heavens […]
The Creation is Haydn’s masterpiece, based on a lifetime of experience and reflecting the happy confidence of the eighteenth century. Although there are moments that presage the nineteenth century, it has none of the agonising of the Romantic period. Three years from the end of the eighteenth century it is a summation and celebration of […]
Renaissance secular music between 1480 and 1620 is large in quantity, high in quality, rich in colour, diverse in form and very different in content from a similar time-span of any later period with which we may be more familiar. This set of four compact discs provides a comprehensive survey of sixteenth-century secular music. Composers […]
