Mendelssohn’s ‘Hear my prayer’ (or, in its English adaptation known as ‘O for the wings of a dove’) is a much loved piece of ‘Victoriana’, made famous by, among others, Master Ernest Lough. Often sung by boy sopranos, it is here performed by Felicity Palmer, traditionally a mezzo, but using the soprano register of her […]
Between 1976 and 1978, Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra made recordings of the complete Schubert symphonies for Decca, as well as some of the incidental music for Rosamunde. Other than the Schumann symphonies, it was the only symphony cycle this tremendous Decca artist made for the label. The recordings were all made in […]
Between 1976 and 1978, Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra made recordings of the complete Schubert symphonies for Decca, as well as some of the incidental music for Rosamunde. Other than the Schumann symphonies, it was the only symphony cycle this tremendous Decca artist made for the label. The recordings were all made in […]
Michael Haydn, brother of Joseph, was a highly proficient composer in his own right who earned the respect and affection of his contemporaries. A Gramophone reviewer described him thus: ‘He is a man whose character, it seems to me, always comes clearly through his music: he was cheerful, easygoing, unambitious (also, said the Mozarts, inclined […]
Mozart’s Symphonies Nos. 13-16 date from a period when the composer was devoting a great deal of his time to symphonic writing, and are particularly interesting from the light they shed on his gradual moulding of the essentially lightweight opera sinfonia to the weightier symphonic manner of Haydn and his Viennese contemporaries. They were penned […]
‘Jephtha’ was the last full-length composition that Handel wrote. (‘The Triumph of Time and Truth’ of 1757 was almost entirely made up of pre-existing music.) Given this fact and also that the actual writing of it was an inordinately laborious task for Handel as he fought with rapidly failing eyesight, its incomparable depth of expression […]
In October 1880, at the age of 61, having poured out his high-spirited talent into over a hundred works for the stage, Offenbach lay exhausted on his deathbed. A strange figure wearing dark glasses and a floppy white cravat knocked at the door. It was Léonce, the comedian who had made such a big hit […]
During the 18th century, it was common for noblemen to employ numbers of musicians to entertain themselves and their guests, and to add dignity and colour to occasions of Church and State. Music was frequently written to form a pleasant background to dinners and parties. Serious or complex music would clearly have been inappropriate for […]
Elisabeth Söderström was a born storyteller. She told stories not just in music, but also peppered her recitals on stage with tales and anecdotes. It made her a perfect interpreter for the collection of children’s songs by Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and Gretchaninov that she recorded with Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1977–78 and which appear on CD2 of […]
The larger-than-life Régine Crespin, made only one song recital record for Decca, of music by Schumann, Wolf, Debussy and Poulenc. This is the first time the entire recital has been made available on CD. As her career progressed, Crespin became associated with certain roles – Kundry, Sieglinde, Brünnhilde, Tosca, the Marschallin – but she was […]
Born in 1888, the Russian soprano, Oda Slobodskaya, won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Despite having no formal musical training, she travelled, at the age of eighteen, from her hometown of Vilno (then part of […]
‘You sing as if you had written it yourself!’ Jean Cocteau once told Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. This anthology of lieder by Brahms and Schumann is a prime example of the great singer doing just that, mining every nuance of emotion from a song while, at the same time, sounding as spontaneous and free as if he […]
