Sir Malcolm Sargent was regarded as Britain's 'ambassador of music' and made many overseas tours as both principal and guest conductor of leading British orchestras and choirs. His energetic and efficient work to popularize classical music made him a household name. Sargent was a skilled conversationalist, and a popular member of Radio's wartime informational programme 'The Brains Trust'. He was knighted in 1947. On the present release, he is heard at the helm of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a cast of stellar soloists as they perform Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, and Dvorak's Te Deum. The Berlioz performance is a BBC Broadcast which was made live from the Royal Festival Hall on February 25, 1953, and the Dvorak is a BBC Broadcast which was made live from the Royal Festival Hall on May 26, 1954.

Le docteur Miracle (Doctor Miracle) is an opérette in one act. The libretto, by Léon Battu and Ludovic Halévy, is based on Sheridan's play Saint Patrick's Day. Bizet wrote the work when he was just 18 years old for a competition organised by Jacques Offenbach. He shared first prize with Charles Lecocq, 6 years his senior. Their reward was to have both pieces performed at Offenbach's Bouffes-Parisiens theatre. The premieres took place on 9 April 1857 and although neither opera was a palpable hit both were performed 11 times before falling into oblivion. It seems that public opinion favoured Lecocq - now we can all be judge and jury.

Thanks to his unusually strong affinity with Haydn and grasp of classical structures, Josef Krips proves a near-ideal conductor for the Fourth Symphony. Noting Mahler's repeated 'nicht eilen' ('don't rush') markings, Krips never hurries the music or indulges in unnecessary point-making, least of all in the radiant variations of the poco adagio third movement. The score unfolds with natural charm and warmth, lovingly communicated by the LSO's string section - led by Hugh Maguire, whose 'Death the Fiddler' is gauged at just the right level of grotesquery. With Suzanne Danco a pristine soloist in the finale, childlike but never childish, this is a beautifully-judged performance of a work which can too easily sound overstated, faux-naif or both.

To have been a composer in late 19th century Germany must have been a mixed blessing. The pantheon of greats featured the refined Brahms, the revolutionary Wagner, and the romantic Reinecke. This left little room, therefore, for composers of less renown, especially those whom the musical and political establishment would have chosen to keep out of the limelight. Salomon Jadassohn found little support for his work as a composer. Although Jadassohn was a distinguished teacher and wrote several important books on composition and music theory, he considered himself primarily a composer. He was acknowledged to be a master of counterpoint and harmony, but he was also a gifted melodist in the tradition of Mendelssohn. His works show too the influence of Wagner and Liszt, whose music deeply impressed him. This double release includes Jadassohn’s Symphony No. 1, a light and attractive work, four Serenades, which are equally as charming, and a Piano Concerto.

Leopold Stokowski was born in London of Polish/Irish ancestry in 1882 and showed such an early aptitude for music that he was able to enter the Royal College of Music at the tender age of 13, the youngest student at that time to do so. His first foreign tour took place in the spring of 1951 when, at the invitation of Sir Thomas Beecham, he took the Royal Philharmonic on a tour of England to coincide with the 'Festival of Britain' that year. It was during this tour that he also made his first appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a Royal Festival Hall concert that included Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. During the next couple of years Stokowski performed many works with the BBC Symphony in a Maida Vale studio programme which included two full-length radio broadcasts. One such broadcast was on May 5, 1954, consisting of Malcolm Arnold's Beckus the Dandipratt, Glière's Concerto for Coloratura Soprano and Orchestra, and the Enescu Romanian Rhapsody No. 1. We must be grateful that Richard Itter recorded the three short works from the first concert, in particular in the case of the Arnold and Glière works, Stokowski was performing both of them for the only time in his life. It was Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony that he played the most, having conducted it for the first time in Cincinnati in 1910. The performance heard here has a certain historical interest as it was the very last time he conducted the work. A packed Royal Albert Hall responded with great enthusiasm to the nonagenarian maestro and indeed to the youthful band of players on the platform.

All the recordings presented here were made ‘off-air’ using a state-of-the-art tape machine. Subsequently they were archived on disc acetates – the tapes themselves being erased and reused. The performance of Symphony 103, conducted by Harry Newstone, is the only one for which the original tape survives. The discs were stored upright in a single location, they had probably never been moved or played, and so have survived more than 60 years in remarkably good condition. The original documentation, by both cataloguing and typed center labels on each disc gives full details of the performers and transmission dates. Richard Itter was generous in not trying to fit too much music on each side – but rather less kind when it came to the abrupt fades on last notes and applause. Here is a rich smorgasbord of Haydn from a wide range of conductors: some reached back into the 19th century, some were the travelling maestros of their time, and some formed British Orchestras that enriched the diet of our nation’s musical life.

The Ukrainian composer, Sergei Zhukov (b. 1951) began his musical training at the Zhitomir Music College, graduating from the Department of Composition in 1973. He then moved to Moscow and studied at the Moscow State Conservatory, graduating in 1978. He continued his studies, completing a postgraduate degree in composition in 1980, studying with Professor Mikhail Chulaki. While still a student, he received a special prize from the Soviet Union of Composers for his work 'Dramatic Triptych.' Zhukov is an eclectic composer, having produced a large catalogue of chamber, choral, orchestral, and theatrical works. He has placed particular emphasis on the genre of the concerto. Zhukov composed three concertos for piano, violin, and cello, which he dedicated to each of the Khazak Nakipbekova sisters (The Bekova Trio). This series of concertos earned him the Music Review award of 'Composer of the Year' in 2002. When he composed 'Silentium,' Zhukov had in his mind not only Eleonora Bekova's skills as a soloist but also her psychological profile. The theme of the concerto is the special relationship between sound and silence. The Violin Concerto 'Angel's Day' was designed to fit the character of violinist Elvira Bekova using her remarkable capacity to perform exactly according to the composer's intention. It also reflects the theatrical style of the composer.

Beyond its musical riches, this medley of 1950s BBC radio broadcasts (from the Richard Itter Collection) opens a portal on England’s post-war Handelian revival. It is no accident that all these performances involve Thurston Dart, as harpsichordist, conductor or musicologist. His energy inspired a generation of musicians to explore neglected works by Handel and a host of other baroque composers, in a lithe chamber style more appropriate to their work than the heavyweight, orchestral grandeur favoured by previous generations. The efforts of Dart and other performers featured here paved the way for those more radical, ‘historically informed’ performance practices, which swept all before them in later decades.

The Hunting of the Snark tells the tale of several characters who go on a sea journey, searching for a mythical creature called “The Snark,” whatever it may be, for the Snark is different things to each of the characters. The Baker’s uncle once told him, “If your Snark be a Boojum!... You will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again!” Through this journey relationships develop, tensions rise and the Baker’s worst nightmare comes true. The Hunting of the Snark shares its fictional setting with Lewis Carroll’s earlier poem “Jabberwocky” published in his children’s novel Through the Looking Glass (1871). Eight nonsense words from “Jabberwocky” appear in The Hunting of the Snark: bandersnatch, beamish, frumious, galumphing, jubjub, mimsiest, outgrabe and uffish. In a letter to the mother of his young friend Gertrude Chataway, Carroll described the domain of the Snark as “an island frequented by the Jubjub and the Bandersnatch- no doubt the very island where the Jabberwock was slain.” Douglas Young (b. 1947) won the competition scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London and the Karl Rankl Prize for orchestral composition. He has written several scores for the Royal ballet, and in the 90’s widened his scope to encompass jazz, popular dance music, film scores, and advertising jingles.

Le retour à la vie - this extraordinary work, half-literary, half-musical reflected much of the thoughts and ideas also found in his letters of the time, using music that was largely written earlier in Paris. The genesis of the work was yet another love-affair gone wrong. The six musical numbers of Lélio are wholly diverse in subject and treatment, yet a sense of order is imposed by the literary format. It is a unique assemblage, there is nothing else quite like it in all musical history. Roméo et Juliette is counted third among Berlioz’s 4 symphonies. Another uniquely constructed work, it moves away from the purely symphonic towards the realm of opera. But Berlioz keeps the formal structure of a symphony firmly in his mind: the three principal instrumental sections – Fete chez Capulet, Scene d’amour, and La reine Mab – making a first movement, slow movement and scherzo encircled by elaborate vocal sections to begin and end.

The world-renowned soprano Joan Sutherland left her Sydney home for London in 1952, with the ultimate aim of singing Wagner. Contracted to Covent Garden, she felt her future lay in heavy, dramatic roles; and her early assignments there included Amelia in Verdis Un ballo in maschera and the title role in Aida. Soon her breathtaking agility, crystalline staccatos and unique stratospheric purity became evident not least as Jenifer in Tippetts The Midsummer Marriage, followed swiftly by the doll Olympia in Offenbachs Les contes dHoffmann (both 1955). Although increasingly identified with the bel canto repertoire, until her 1959 Covent Garden triumph in Donizettis Lucia di Lammermoor she kept her options open. The title role in Webers Euryanthe was one of several German, lyric roles added to her repertoire during the mid-1950s, alongside Pamina in Mozarts Die Zauberflöte and Eva in Wagners Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. She was also to remain a staunch Handelian throughout her career, recording the title role in Athalia under Christopher Hogwood (Decca) as late as 1986.