The budget Classics for Pleasure line from Britain has reissued a growing variety of famous performances from the 1960s and early 1970s. Some haven't aged a bit; some offer sterling examples of how fashions change. And some fall in between those extremes. Made in 1974, this was a reference recording of Haydn's The Creation for many years, ...
When Thomas Beecham died and went to heaven, he no doubt took God aside and said to Him, "Look here Old Boy, You have done a dashed fine job of creating time and space and so on and so forth. But, I say, listen to my recording of The Seasons: nearly as fine as the real thing, don't you think?" And no doubt the Almighty agreed with Beecham: his The ...
Malcolm Sargent began serving as an accompanist for amateur productions of Gilbert & Sullivan when he was 14, was musical director for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1926 to 1928, and made complete recordings of several of the operettas with the company, so he clearly had the Gilbert & Sullivan tradition in his blood. During the late '50s and ...
Little on the outside packaging of this album, other than the names of the soloists, tells the buyer that the music was originally recorded in 1971. First released by the Vanguard label, the performance was well done in the first place and has had a durable life in budget reissues. The buyer should know what he or she is getting -- a thoroughly ...
Back in its day, Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's 1958 recordings of Liszt's "Faust" Symphony and tone poem Orpheus were greeted with heartfelt gratitude by the listening public. Here were performances of tremendous power but wonderful delicacy, of terrific sophistication but marvelous tenderness, of high-minded idealism and ...
Anybody who loves the orchestral music of English composer Edward Elgar -- the brilliant Enigma Variations, the passionate Violin Concerto, the heartrending Cello Concerto, the magnificent symphonies, the spectacular overtures, and the virtuosic Bach and Handel transcriptions -- will sooner or later have to deal with his three sacred oratorios: ...
While Johannes Somary's 1970 Vanguard recording of Handel's Messiah provides an early example of authentic period re-creation -- it is a complete performance of the 1966 Watkins Shaw edition, with pared-down choral and orchestral forces, appropriate ornamentation, and a continuo alternating between harpsichord and organ -- it sounds a little ...
This release really is the "essential" Stravinsky in the sense that every major piece of his entire oeuvre is represented here and in chronological order. You get a picture of his compositional style and how it changed over the course of his career. It ends with a bonus track, an animated recollection by Stravinsky of the writing and premiere of ...
The performances in this box constitute the highest achievement of Thomas Beecham with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Though his many EMI/Columbia recordings of the standard and not so standard repertoire were among the finest of their time, Beecham's Haydn was and remains special. All Beecham's best qualities are in his Haydn -- suave phrasing ...
Iolanthe has never achieved quite the place in the popular imagination that H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado have, but musically and dramatically it's one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most musically and dramatically integrated operettas. Sullivan's score is even more than usually tuneful, and his orchestration is particularly ...
Malcolm Sargent served as musical director for he D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1926 to 1928 so he was well familiar with the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition. His recordings of the operettas from productions at Glyndebourne during the late '50s and early '60s have very high musical standards, both in the quality of the vocal soloists and the ...
Malcolm Sargent served as an accompanist for amateur productions of Gilbert & Sullivan beginning when he was 14, was musical director for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1926 to 1928, and made complete recordings of several of the operettas with the company during that period, so he clearly had the Gilbert & Sullivan tradition in his blood. ...
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