A collection of songs and dances by Dowland, East and Holborne performed by two of the most eminent of British early-music groups in the late-1960s: Musica Reservata and the Purcell Consort of Voices. The performance of contrapuntal vocal music with viols doubling the voices, stems from a long European tradition and in several of the […]
Most parents will assert that siblings do not always play well together but classical music gives many examples to the contrary. Although violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, was the most famous member of his family, he performed and made several recordings with his sisters, Hephzibah and Yaltah both pianists. (Pianist Marcel Ciampi who taught both sisters, remarked […]
While Dohnányi’s musical language was firmly rooted in the nineteenth century, the two chamber works on this reissue – championed by András Schiff and the Takács Quartet, no less – deserve much greater attention than they get. Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet was written when he was seventeen and bears the strong imprint of Brahms, courtesy of […]
These recordings of the voices of Inge Borkh and Ljuba Welitsch are very fine examples of the art of the dramatic soprano from the 1950s and early 1960s. Borkh acquired a considerable reputation as Aida, Tosca, Turandot, and Medea in Cherubini’s opera of the same name, as well as Leonora in Fidelio. On this anthology, […]
To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sibelius, Decca Eloquence collects together the four LPs of the composer’s music that Horst Stein recorded for Decca between 1971 and 1981. They include all the important tone poems, the Second Symphony (receiving its first international release on CD) and music for the theatre. All were critically […]
On this reissue, Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular Piano Concerto No. 1 is coupled with a relative rarity – the Concert Fantasy. Peter Katin was not the first pianist to make a studio recording of Tchaikovksy’s Concert Fantasy – that honour went to Tatiana Nikolayeva in 1950 – but his 1958 recording with Sir Adrian Boult was the […]
The D’Oyly Carte Company began its association with Decca after World War II, embarking on a series of recordings in the late 1940s and early 50s of the major Savoy Operas. A subsequent stereo-era cycle, begun in 1957, was followed in turn by a new series of which the present 1974 recording of ‘Iolanthe’ is […]
Time to pass in court circles there certainly was – and money to spend in the passing of it too! Lavish entertainments, revelry and dancing, pageants, music and the ritual of the hunt were known to Henry’s queen, Katharine; and all these culminated in the superlative splendours of the Field of Cloth of Gold in […]
Bursting onto the scene with a sensational two-year run at the Savoy Theatre (672 performances commencing on 14 March 1885), it was not long before ‘The Mikado’ was playing around the world in myriad different productions and translations – and it continues to be greeted with unparalleled global enthusiasm today. This October 1957 recording of […]
Conductor Jussi Jalas (1908–1985), was closely associated with Sibelius’ music. Furthermore, he was closely associated with Sibelius’ family as he married Sibelius’ daughter, Jeanne Margareta and fathered two sons. His teachers included Pierre Monteux and he taught at the conservatory named after his father-in-law between 1945 and 1965. Later, he directed the Finnish National Opera […]
Several countries have their light operas: the British their Gilbert and Sullivan, the Spanish their zarzuelas, the French their operettes. All of these display quite tight-knit styles but the operetta tradition of Austria and specifically Vienna, is more diffuse, reflecting the differing styles of folk music found in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The world of […]
That Richard Strauss loved and understood the soprano voice is an inescapable fact. He was married to soprano, Pauline de Ahna and thus had a living laboratory for his song-writing. Even after Pauline had retired from the stage, he continued to favour sopranos in his operas and other vocal compositions. And sopranos repaid him with […]
