Driving intensity, rhythmic flair, and demonstration-quality sound are brought to the fore in a new anthology of Antal Doráti's early recordings with the Philharmonia Hungarica on Mercury and Philips. Founded in 1956, the Philharmonia Hungarica emerged from turbulent post-war times as a crack ensemble of émigré Hungarian musicians who had fled Communism for the West. While they gave concerts in Europe and the US, it was through these seven albums on Mercury and Philips that they became famous, and synonymous with the name of the conductor Antal Doráti. Together, Doráti and the Philharmonia Hungarica would go on to make a celebrated cycle of Haydn symphonies for Decca in the early 1970s. But these early recordings already demonstrate what a potent artistic combination they were, as forerunners both to that monument of gramophone history, and to the modern-day Budapest Festival Orchestra. As reviewers at the time remarked, the strings play with a particular unanimity and attack which sounds uniquely 'Hungarian'.

A booklet essay by the music historian David Patmore tells the story of the Philharmonia Hungarica and their debut on record. All six Mercury albums were recorded at sessions in June 1958, held in the Vienna Konzerthaus: a spacious but analytical acoustic, well suited to the label's trademark high-impact sound. The repertoire played to the strengths of both label and musicians: mostly Hungarian music from the last half century, vividly colored and coursing with rhythmic energy.

There is an early taste of the ensemble's feeling for Haydn, in the 'Surprise' and 'Drum Roll' Symphonies. Doráti's established reputation as a masterful conductor of ballet brings a sweeping sense of line to a collection of Viennese waltzes. The ace in the pack of the Mercury/Philharmonia Hungarica albums was Respighi's suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, which soon became a demonstration disc for audiophiles worldwide. Never previously collected together, this Mercury legacy is complemented by the two albums which the Philharmonia Hungarica and Doráti recorded for Philips. The ensemble's first-ever recording, made in October 1957, appeared on the Fontana imprint, coupling Bartók's Divertimento with Leo Weiner's Hungarian Dances. From 1974, the second Philips album returns to Bartók, with gripping interpretations of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Dance Suite.

Long out of print, Deryck Cooke's invaluable 'Introduction to Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen' reappears on CD, with it's original LP couplings of Siegfried Idyll and Kinderkatechismus. Almost as soon as it reached completion with the release of Die Walk�re in 1966, the Decca Ring cycle conducted by Sir Georg Solti was recognized as the greatest achievement in the history of recorded sound. Three years later, the cycle was issued complete for the first time, and it came with a significant appendix: a three-LP introduction to the music-drama, written and narrated by Deryck Cooke. An English writer on music, Cooke had come to international attention through his completion of Mahler's sketches for the Tenth Symphony. He was a friend of the Decca Ring's producer, John Culshaw, who invited him to make this introduction. No academic, but a broadcaster on the BBC's Third Programme and a pioneer in what might be called popular musicology, Cooke presumed no prior knowledge on the part of his listeners, only a willingness to immerse themselves in the world of the Ring and in it's universal themes of love, power, self-knowledge and tragedy. Outlining the musical leitmotifs which underpin the drama of the Ring, and the part they play in moving it ever onwards, Cooke drew for illustration on excerpts from the complete Decca recording. In addition, Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic recorded many excerpts especially for this introduction - played slower or extended or without voices, to aid comprehension. (Some of these excerpts may have been recorded during rehearsals for various orchestral sections.) Countless listeners have since had their understanding of the Ring immeasurably enhanced by engaging with Cooke's introduction. In complement to Decca's recent remastering of the original recording, Eloquence now reissues Cooke's introduction on CD, presented just as it was in the original box. Unlike previous digital-era issues, this set also includes the recordings of the Siegfried Idyll, led by the Vienna Philharmonic violinist Walter Weller, and the charming Katechismus which Wagner composed as another birthday present for his wife Cosima. All six LP sides fit on two generously filled CDs, and the booklet includes full details of the track points as well as newly inscribed musical examples, to help listeners navigate their way around the narrative. Much more than a period-piece, this set remains the ideal introduction to Wagner's Ring, with much to teach both newcomers and experienced listeners to a perennially challenging and rewarding work of theatrical genius.

Decca signed an exclusive contract with the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet) in the summer of 1948 as a commercially motivated move: a sweetener to the deal that also poached the Philharmonic Orchestra from EMI. The ensemble had been formed only a year or so previously around the Boskovsky brothers, violinist Willi and clarinetist Alfred. Soon enough, audiences at home as well as in concert were enjoying the sound of a quintessentially Viennese ensemble, it's members drawn from the ranks of the Philharmonic, in Classical-era music that could have been written for them, starting with the Septet by Beethoven and the Octet by Schubert. The sweet, silvery tone of the Octet and the easy give-and-go of it's phrasing established the Octet as the latest in a line of distinguished Viennese chamber ensembles, from the Ros� Quartet of Mahler's era to the Barylli Quartet documented by the Westminster label. The Vienna Octet enjoyed the advantage of Decca's top-of-the-range engineering, and they continued to set down classic interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert through the course of the 1950s, for the new LP format and then for stereo. In 1956 their Decca albums began to reflect the diversity of their concert programs, with the Octet written for them by the Belgian composer Marcel Poot. While they continued to enjoy free-spirited partnerships on record with the likes of Clifford Curzon and the Viennese pianist Walter Panhofer in Schubert's 'Trout' Quintet, they also recorded lesser-known Romantics such as Spohr, Kreutzer and Berwald, and modern repertoire by Britten, Hindemith and Egon Wellesz. By the time of the Vienna Octet's final recording in November 1972, only two members of it's original lineup were left, including clarinetist Alfred Boskovsky, but critics and record buyers had continued to recognize that, especially in the central repertoire, an unselfconscious authenticity set the ensemble apart from it's rivals.

LIMITED EDITION. A meeting of minds in Amsterdam: the complete Philips recordings of Sir Colin Davis and the Concertgebouworkest made in the orchestra's acoustically optimal home and featuring classic accounts of Haydn, Berlioz, Dvor�k and Stravinsky. Davis lends these readings rhythmic impetus and unassuming authority; the orchestra and audio engineers respond with sonic warmth and transparency. Colin Davis made his debut with the Concertgebouw in 1966, and conductor and orchestra quickly established a mutual affinity. Interviewed by Niek Nelissen for a new appreciation of their legacy on record, a Concertgebouw violinist recalls his 'typically British' humour in rehearsal. Davis gave the musicians of 'the orchestra a lot of freedom. He kept control in a good way, which made him popular with the orchestra.' It took another eight years for Davis and the Concertgebouw to make their first records together, but they made up for lost time. The albums of Beethoven's Violin Concerto (with Arthur Grumiaux) and the Symphonie fantastique of Berlioz were universally praised for their rhythmic impetus, and for the kind of unassuming authority that became a hallmark of Davis's conducting. In both cases, the new recordings superseded earlier versions by the same artists (Davis's LSO Berlioz, and Grumiaux's previous Beethovens with the Concertgebouw) not least because of the warmth and the transparency of the Philips recordings, made in the orchestra's acoustically optimal home. There followed, over the next eight years, a string of artistic and commercial successes. The Concertgebouw had not recorded much Haydn before, but Davis harnessed their richness of tone and supple responses, and trained it on Haydn's late symphonies with revelatory results. Even while period-instrument performers began to bring new perspectives to Haydn, Davis's lively sympathy showed itself in the buoyant rhythms, the cultivated eighteenth-century phrasing and the exuberance which always belongs to his symphonies. Together, they recorded the complete 'London' symphonies followed by the 'Paris', and this set also features a bonus of No. 84, which Davis recorded with the English Chamber Orchestra for L'Oiseau-Lyre in 1960. This is the first time all of Davis's Haydn symphony recordings with the Concertgebouworkest have been issued collectively. Equally acclaimed was a Dvor�k series featuring the last three symphonies, the concertos for violin and cello (with Salvatore Accardo and Heinrich Schiff) and the Symphonic Variations. Throughout his long career, Davis took particular pleasure in bringing out the nostalgic side as well as the Czech-accented rhythms of Dvor�k's music, just as his approach to Igor Stravinsky never lost it's cutting edge, as displayed here in Concertgebouw recordings of the three early Diaghilev ballets. While these recordings have rarely left the catalogue thanks to their popularity, hearing them together sheds new light on the remarkable idiomatic strength of the Concertgebouw/Davis partnership. Original couplings and covers have the ring of nostalgic authenticity, complemented by Niek Nelissen's new essay and many archive photographs of conductor and orchestra.

Michael Tilson Thomas's complete recordings for Deutsche Grammophon (1970-2003) and Argo (1992-1995) encapsulate the conductor's restlessly exploratory nature and masterful handling of the modern orchestra. The recordings in this collection demonstrate his superb ear for complex rhythms and textures, an orchestral builder, as well as an inspired interpreter of the widest imaginable range of music. Even the most cynical of critics set aside their Beckmesser's slate when Michael Tilson Thomas stepped on to the international stage in the early 1970s when Deutsche Grammophon released albums of Tchaikovsky, Debussy and American music. They were made near the start of his tenure as the Boston Symphony's Assistant Conductor, and they demonstrated a preternatural assurance as well as a superb ear for complex rhythms and textures. Tilson Thomas's first period with DG was relatively short-lived - just a couple of years - but it also took in his scintillating pianism, accompanying BSO principals in Debussy sonatas, and a viscerally exact Stravinsky Rite of Spring, as well as, of course, the luminous account of Tchaikovsky's 'Winter Dreams' symphony (still considered a benchmark recording of this work). All the repertoire played to his strengths and demonstrated his considerable talents as an orchestral builder as well as an inspired interpreter of the widest imaginable range of music. Once installed as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, Tilson Thomas rekindled his DG relationship with two definitive albums of music by his mentor Leonard Bernstein. On The Town and Arias and Barcarolles both feature Frederica von Stade and Thomas Hampson, who were also close and long-standing associates of the composer. The LSO/DG partnership also featured typically insightful and sympathetic performances of concertos with pianist Jean-Marc Luisada and cellist Mischa Maisky. With Il sogno, Elvis Costello's ballet score for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the conductor's skill at shaping the most eclectic range of styles comes to the fore. Finally, the set brings together for the first time the Argo recordings made by Tilson Thomas with the New World Symphony, which he founded in 1997 as a 'training orchestra' but which rapidly established itself as an international-calibre ensemble, capable of taking on the most challenging repertoire. With them, Tilson Thomas produced an exhilarating album of Latin American dances (Tangazo) a sensuous survey of Morton Feldman's orchestral music, and finally a loving tribute to his teacher from college days, the composer Ingolf Dahl. If Dahl's music is still too little known, the reissue of this album should bring it new friends. Reissued with original jackets, the set includes a new appreciation of the conductor's career by Peter Quantrill.

"We all envied her, because all that we had to struggle so hard to achieve seemed so natural and self-evident to her because she knew how to sing from the heart" said Elisabeth Schwarzkopf of her colleague Irmgard Seefried. Collected here are Seefried's complete recital recordings for Deutsche Grammophon as well as highlights from her recordings of opera and sacred music for the label and includes material both unpublished and new to CD.

Irmgard Seefried was a revered artist among lovers of natural singing, wrote the critic Alan Blyth. 'The emotions, grave or gay, are expressed directly, unfussily, genuinely, in that peculiarly outgoing manner that was this artist's supreme gift.' This gift illuminates song repertoire from Bach to Bartók and beyond in a newly compiled and remastered set of her recital albums recorded by Deutsche Grammophon in the 1950s and 60s. 'If I were condemned to hear only one voice for the remainder of my life I think it might well be hers,' wrote Blyth on another occasion (a reissue of the 1953 'Liederabend' anthology of concert performances). 'If I wanted to be charmed, to laugh or to cry I would find her the perfect companion.'

The core of the set is formed by several albums of Romantic Lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. As well as an imaginative collection of Goethe settings, there is an album of Heine and Schumann, poetry and song, in which the recited portions are reissued on CD for the first time. The set includes two appendices, both also new to CD: Seefried's contribution to the DG audio documentary series 'Erzähltes Leben', and 'Erik Werba Accompanies You', in which the soprano's regular recital partner plays the piano part for famous Lieder (with the idea that the listener at home will take the sung line for themselves).

Seefried also made several opera recordings as well as sacred music for Deutsche Grammophon. Generous excerpts from these - often including entire scenes, not just arias - are included as newly-compiled anthologies across five CDs.

Seefried's voice was renowned for it's beauty and tonally purity, with minimal vibrato. Her diction was exquisite, as were her phrasing and legato in Schumann's cycle of Mary, Queen of Scots Lieder. Especially in folksong repertoire such as the Liebeslieder-Walzer of Brahms, she contrived to give the impression that her art came easily to her, and that it's expression was an inevitable extension of her personality, devoid of any suggestion of imposing her will upon the music. But this impression was the essence of Seefried's greatness, and it transferred to modern song repertoire, too: not only the opulent romanticism of Respighi's Il tramonto but Werner Egk's German-Mediterranean Quattro canzoni, and a selection of sacred solo motets by Paul Hindemith that surprised and delighted many critics on it's first issue.

All the material in this Original Covers collection has been newly remastered, and the set is richly illustrated and accompanied by a new essay on Seefried's art by Tully Potter as well as an English translation of Ein Selbstporträt by Fer van Campen.

The complete Westminster recordings by ARTUR RODZINSKI date were made in London and Vienna from 1954 to 1958. While they represent a true autocrat of the podium, Rodzinski drew from orchestras every last ounce of energy as well as cultivating their virtuoso talents. Most recordings in this set appear internationally for the first time, together with some (previously unpublished) rehearsal extracts. Like his colleagues and fellow emigres Fritz Reiner, George Szell and Arturo Toscanini, Artur Rodzinski did not seek to make friends in the process of making music. His rehearsal methods were as ruthless as his conducting style was fiercely driven. His caustic manner extended to fellow professionals in the business such as soloists and agents, and the new essay by James H. North for this Eloquence collection includes stories of his dictatorial behaviour. But then Rodzinski's musical values also represent another era, and he drew from orchestras every last ounce of energy as well as cultivating their virtuoso talents. Once he had emigrated to the US, Rodzinski played an instrumental role in making the Cleveland and Chicago Symphony orchestras into the superbly responsive ensembles for which they are world-renowned today. Having retired from the stress of directorships, in the mid-1950s and in variable health, he produced a remarkable Indian summer of recordings for the Westminster label. Made mostly in London between 1954 and his death in November 1958, these Westminster albums centred on the late-Romantic and early-20th-century repertoire which responds to a virtuoso conductor's concern for subtle orchestral colours and extremes of speed and dynamic: Mussorgsky Pictures, Kod�ly Dances and Richard Strauss's tone-poems. Rodzinski plays insightful accompanist to piano concertos with Paul Badura-Skoda, Youri Boukoff and J�rg Demus, but he achieved a special affinity with Erica Morini in the violin concertos of Brahms and Tchaikovsky. Rodzinski's decades of experience in the theatre bring sweeping authority to 'bleeding chunks' of Wagner, suites of Bizet and Tchaikovsky ballets. Further highlights in this set of newly-remastered mono and stereo albums include a Shostakovich Fifth which testifies to Rodzinski's early commitment to the composer in the West. Other, enduringly robust interpretations of canon symphonies include Dvorak's Ninth, Prokofiev's First, Tchaikovsky Nos. 4-6, and his very last Westminster album, of Beethoven and Schubert. At the end of the sessions, Rodzinski thanked the orchestra in a speech which was captured for posterity and reissued here. More rarities unearthed especially for this set include several rehearsal sequences, capturing Rodzinski's inimitable manner and dedication to his craft.

The complete Decca recordings of German conductor Horst Stein cover an astonishingly wide range of repertoire, with Friedrich Gulda in the 'very spontaneous, very lyrical Beethoven concerto cycle' (Gramophone), through music by Cherubini and Weber, to critically-acclaimed recordings of Bruckner, Wagner and Wolf. Included are four discs of his colourful Sibelius: 'free-wheeling readings of great thrust, drive and a big line... The sound is at once biting and smooth' wrote High Fidelity. The complete Decca recordings of a Horst Stein, directed with the unfussy authority of his many appearances at Bayreuth and the Vienna State Opera. The recordings in this set, cover an astonishingly broad range of repertoire. Beethoven concertos (with Friedrich Gulda, once a staple of the Decca catalogue), Cherubini, Prokofiev, Bruckner, Sibelius: all writing in completely contrasting idioms, and yet all brought stylishly to life here under the baton of Horst Stein. Stein learnt his craft as an opera conductor in postwar Bayreuth, where he served as an assistant to Karajan, Keilberth and Knappertsbusch in celebrated performances of the Ring and Parsifal. He later became known for the expert pacing and dramatic pulse of his own Wagner conducting, which is represented in this set by an album of orchestral highlights with the Vienna Philharmonic. Stein worked in Bayreuth and Vienna throughout his career, and later in life became a revered figure in Japan. He represented the best of the German Kapellmeister tradition, which produced straightforwardly eloquent and powerful performances of whatever music was at hand. When Stein conducted Bruckner - the Second and Sixth, again recorded in Vienna - he sounded like a natural Brucknerian. When he recorded Sibelius - four albums of tone poems and the Second Symphony from Geneva - he sounded like a complete Sibelian, and so on. As an addendum to his Decca output comes an album of Russian opera arias with the bass Kim Borg recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Just as Stein lends noble support to Borg in the Death Scene from Boris Godunov, he is a detailed accompanist to Josef Siv� in violin concertos by Glazunov and Prokofiev, and to Friedrich Gulda in the piano concertos of Beethoven. Horst Stein's conducting will impress many modern listeners with it's rhythmic power and lack of ego, and this set is the most comprehensive survey of his legacy on record ever issued.

Hungarian Pictures presents recordings of music by Liszt, Bart�k, Kod�ly and Dohn�nyi in recordings of native authority, many of them making their first appearance on CD. J�nos Ferencsik and Gy�rgy Lehel were leading orchestras who knew their style intimately, and who had the Hungarian rhythms of this music flowing in their blood. In the 1960s, Deutsche Grammophon and the Westminster label introduced listeners to much fascinating Hungarian repertoire which they had never previously encountered. This Eloquence set of 'Hungarian Connections' gathers up these rare recordings for the first time and reissues them in newly remastered versions with original covers. A booklet essay by Peter Quantrill explores the careers of the two principal musicians leading the music-making on the set, J�nos Ferencsik and Gy�rgy Lehel. These were both conductors who did not flee Hungary when the revolution was so brutally suppressed by the Communists in 1956. Accordingly, they came to play a central role in musical culture in postwar Budapest, with Ferencsik based at the Opera and Lehel at the Radio and TV company. Ferencsik and Lehel were leading orchestras who knew their style intimately, and who had the Hungarian rhythms of this music flowing in their blood: Ferencsik remarked that he performed Bart�k's music as naturally as if he were breathing. No less compelling is the single album issued by DG of Kodaly conducting his own music, which introduced the shimmeringly evocative tone-poem Summer Evening to many western listeners. Finally, there is a single LP of highlights from the 1961 Liszt-Bartok Piano Competition, held in Budapest: the winner G�bor Gabos gives a thunderously eloquent account of Liszt's Piano Sonata, and there are further performances by the young Dino Ciani, Valentin Belchenko and David Wilde. Hungarian Connections is a feast of rare recordings which no collector will want to miss.

Russian Folk Culture Is One the Richest I Know. In Recent Years, Some of It Lighter Aspects Have Been Commandeered By the Entertainment And Tourist Industries: With This Recording I Wanted to Go Backwards And Present Songs I Have So Often Heard - But Never Sung Myself - in a Direct And Unvarnished, Yet Classical Way. The Songs I Selected [for CD 1] I Feel Are Truly Russian - Many Are Melancholy, Most Are Bittersweet, with the Kind of Mocking Irony Which Counterbalances Sentimentality. Two I Decided to Sing Alone, in Honor of Chaliapin, But in My Own Way. For the Rest of This Program I Was Privileged to Work with the Magnificent Ossipov Russian Folk Orchestra, Who Live And Breathe This Music. They Made Me Feel a Welcome Guest in Repertoire Far from My Operatic Home, But Very Close to My Heart. Dmitri Hvorostovsky This Double CD Set Returns Two Popular CDs to the Catalogue - Hvorostovsky Performing Songs with Orchestra (CD 1) And with Choir (CD 2). Winner of the Cardiff Singer of the World, He Has Gone on to Give Great Performances in Operas By Verdi And Is Unequalled in the Russian Baritone Opera Repertoire Today. This Repertoire Is Dear to His Heart And in It He Invests Every Ounce of Artistry That Marks His Performances on the Operatic Stage And the Concert Platform. Artists: Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ossipov Russian Folk Orchestra / Nikolai Kalinin (CD 1), St. Petersburg Chamber Choir / Nikolai Korniev (CD 2)

MUSSORGSKY: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION (PNO & ORCH)

Birgit Nilsson. Richard Wagner. It was an operatic marriage made in heaven that lasted for over twenty years and, thanks to recordings, continues to thrill music lovers around the world. She sang her first Wagnerian part in Stockholm. It was Senta in Der fliegende Holl nder. It was greeted rapturously and throughout her long career it was for her Wagner and Strauss roles that she was most noted. Many of the greatest recordings of music dramas and operas by these composers have featured her, and many appear on Decca. However, she also made two Wagner records for Philips - one with Leif Segerstam in 1974 of extended scenes from Walk re and Parsifal, another, in 1972, with Colin Davis of the Wesendonck-Lieder and extracts from Der fliegende Holl nder, Rienzi and the little-known early Wagner opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). Also included are scenes from Tristan und Isolde, one of her great calling cards and of which she made one studio recording with Georg Solti, and another of scenes (with Grace Hoffman as Brang ne) with Hans Knappertsbusch.

Considered by many to be Grumiaux's best recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto, this performance, by turn tender and muscular, receives it's first international release on CD. The Concertgebouw is in glorious form under Van Beinum and Aafje Heynis is an amber-toned soloist in the inspiring Alto Rhapsody.

One of the most entertaining composer autobiographies is Miklos Rozsa's Double Life, first published in 1982 - the same year that he scored his last film (the Steve Martin vehicle Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid). The book's title is an allusion to R zsa's twofold career as a composer of music for the concert hall and for motion picture soundtracks. R zsa was respected by Hollywood and by Carnegie Hall alike, and both halves of his 'double life' as a composer were artistically valid and complete unto themselves. Master of the epic, his scores for Ben Hur and Quo Vadis are legendary. The colourful booklet notes by Raymond Tuttle include fascinating commentary on the background to these recordings as well as the sensitive relationship between Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann. Also included is the latter's recording of music from R zsa's score for Julius Caesar - one of the first films to be recorded in stereo. The recordings of both Ben Hur and Quo Vadis had limited release on Decca/London and are.

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 agonizing of the Romantic period. Three years from the end of the eighteenth century it is a summation and celebration of that century's ideals by one of it's greatest figures. The story is unfolded by three soloists, whose names, taken from Milton, were supplied by the Baron Van Swieten: Gabriel (soprano), Uriel (tenor) and Raphael (bass). Haydn's Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo is a short mass in the Viennese tradition, although it is thought that it was composed for the Convent Chapel of the Eisenstadt Chapter Haydn's Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo is a short mass in the Viennese tradition, although it is thought that it was composed for the Convent Chapel of the Eisenstadt Chapter of the Brothers of Mercy (Barmherzige Br der), with which order Haydn had long bee.

An original Philips album of two light-orchestral masterpieces by Dvor�k, with the Serenade for Strings receiving a first international reissue on CD. While best known as a conductor of the central symphonic repertoire, and the operas of Berlioz and Tippett, Colin Davis always showed special affection for the music of Dvor�k. He made this album in March 1968, conducting the orchestra with whom he enjoyed the longest and most fruitful relationship of his career, the London Symphony Orchestra. After some troubled times in the early 1960s, when Davis suffered a breakdown and the orchestra passed him over in favour of Istvan Kertesz as music director, they hit a sweet spot together in this album and several others such as the early volumes of their Berlioz and Tippett series together. The Symphonic Variations remains a comparatively neglected work - astonishingly so, given it's tremendous charm. When Hans Richter first conducted the work in Vienna, he declared that he could never remember a new piece achieving such a popular success. Brahms thought equally highly of it, and perhaps valued the quality of wit which is rarely found in Dvor�k's music. Davis certainly did so, and conducted the Variations throughout his career, including late in life with the LSO, but this first recording enjoys a particularly unfettered freedom of expression. Affection also beams from every bar of the Serenade for Strings which Dvor�k composed in 1876, the year before the Variations. This was a happy time for the composer, who was so often beset by suffering and personal tragedy, and it breathes the same joyous air as his Fifth Symphony and Second String Quintet, full of Czech and Viennese dance rhythms, which are handled by the LSO's string section with rather more lightness of touch than on Davis's later Philips recording with the BRSO.

Perhaps no pair of singers on record has interpreted this cycle of 46 songs with such natural accomplishment as Irmgard Seefried and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. They made this recording near the end of the 1950s - at the height of Seefried's career and near the start of Fischer-Dieskau's, and it's qualities of both freshness and delight in response to the text and vocal beauty have stood the test of time. The singers performed the cycle together live at the 1958 Salzburg Festival to an ordering devised by the pianist for the occasion and Seefried's regular accompanist, Erik Werba. In the DG studios a few months later, however, Fischer-Dieskau was joined by his own regular instrumental partner at the time, J�rg Demus. Meanwhile the subtly different responses of both pianists - Werba fuller-toned than Demus, whose pointed articulation owes something to his work on 'period' instruments - offer food for both thought and pleasure. Without attempting to concoct a storyline, Werba's ordering allows the poetry's depictions of woman and man to contrast with and complement each other. A spirited opening group is followed by one which is predominantly lyrical, illustrating the need for love, the woman's surrender and then wavering, a manly longing for death, a farewell, and appeal to sworn fidelity. The closing section juxtaposes a declaration of love, humor, mockery, caricature, resignation and finally boasting, with the soprano's jubilant 'confession' that she has 21 lovers. All four musicians fully bring to life the emotions of elation, joy, anger and irony in Wolf's songs. Fischer-Dieskau's second recording (with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Gerald Moore for EMI) is justly famous in it's own right, but the magic of this DG recording lies in the unaffected ease of his partnership with Seefried.

Several legendary but long-unavailable recordings freshly remastered in a comprehensive 'original covers' set of Ruggiero Ricci's recordings for American Decca during the 1960s. With definitive accounts of the Tchaikovsky Concerto and the Paganini Caprices recorded in 1950, Ruggiero Ricci became established as a Decca artist in the early days of LP. A decade later he began recording for Decca's American division, and between 1960 and 1970 he made nine albums of solo, recital and concerto repertoire which are gathered here in one set for the first time. Ricci had already recorded some of the solo Bach sonatas and partitas, but in 1967 he made his first complete set for American Decca. Tully Potter's illuminating booklet essay explains how a snowstorm forced Ricci to hole up in a hotel for several days prior to the sessions, and his devoted his time to perfecting his interpretations of Bach. Ricci was renowned for the astonishing virtuosity that enabled him to tackle the Caprices and Concertos of Paganini without breaking sweat - he became the first great exponent of the composer in the LP era with his Decca recordings - and he remade the Second Concerto for American Decca in 1964 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Rudolf: one of several albums here receiving it's first international release on CD. The American Decca legacy of Ricci also included several 'concept albums' which soon became collector's items. The set opens with the first of them from 1964, on which the violinist plays The Four Seasons of Vivaldi on four different Strads, one for each concerto, with a string ensemble fielding another ten Strads for a uniquely rich string sound. Two years earlier, Ricci had made "The Glory of Cremona", which saw him play fifteen priceless violins in sessions attended by two security guards. Even these two projects pale beside the astonishing virtuosity on display in "Bravura!", which collects some of Ricci's favourite "knuckle-breakers" by Paganini, Wieniawski and Ernst. The set closes with another album new to CD, "Violin Plus 1" from 1970, which paired Ricci with five different musicians for a unique display of his versatility, accompanying soprano Lee Venora in Villa-Lobos, taking the spotlight in a Saint-Sa�ns Fantaisie for violin and harp, and meeting David Nadien as an equal in the Sonata for Two Violins by Prokofiev. As well as one of the last century's most spell-binding technicians on the violin, Ricci was a complete musician, to whom this set pays eloquent tribute.

Rafael Kubelik, the Czech conductor, was in every way a big man: tall and robust in physique, he was the most generous of human beings and he inspired devoted affection among his friends and colleagues. This complete Decca collection finds Kubel�k working with the Wiener Philharmoniker, the Israel Philharmonic, the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio, and for a single operatic extract, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Rafael Kubel�k had made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1950 Salzburg Festival, and together they made a series of recordings during the late 1950s which have long been prized for their warmth and spontaneous-sounding expression. The Mahler First introduced countless listeners to the composer for the first time, as did the Jan�cek Sinfonietta. After the spectacular success of Kubel�k's first M� Vlast recording, made in Chicago, the Vienna remake is softer edged but no less scored with the nationalistic fervour and colour that made the conductor synonymous with the piece until his death in 1996. Cast in the same mould as the Smetana are the Brahms symphonies and Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. In fact few other label-focused anthologies of Kubel�k's recordings survey so wide a span: a quarter of a century from the Dvor�k Cello Concerto with Pierre Fournier in 1954 to the 1979 recording of Der Freisch�tz, Weber's foundational work of German Romantic opera, strongly cast in the Decca tradition and led by the radiantly sung Agathe of Hildegard Behrens, then at the start of a career that would soon establish her as the leading Wagnerian soprano of her generation. In this Bavarian Radio appendix to his Decca career, Kubel�k made a no less attractive recording of Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor, likewise transferring the atmosphere of the stage into the studio with the experience of decades behind him. Towards the end of Kubel�k's Vienna years with Decca, he also performed and recorded in Israel. The Decca sessions in a cinema outside Tel Aviv yielded an account of Dvor�k's Serenade for Strings in which critics had no trouble hearing the authentic voice of the Czech nation in exile, embodied in the figure of Kubel�k for half a century. The booklet includes a full contextual account by Peter Quantrill of Kubel�k's Decca career.

SONG FOR CHRISTMAS: 26 CAROLS & CHRISTMAS SONGS

Newly compiled for the first time, the Decca career of a pre-eminent Mozart conductor, complemented by his recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Westminster. Peter Maag began his career as a pianist, but turned to conducting with the encouragement of Wilhelm Furtw�ngler. He made his first Decca recording having lately turned 30, with the Suisse Romande Orchestra whose founder-director, Ernest Ansermet, also gave his fellow Swiss conductor much early encouragement. Critics recognized Maag as a natural Mozartian, and his first seven Decca recordings were exclusively dedicated to the composer's serenades, symphonies and arias (accompanying Jennifer Vyvyan and Fernando Corena). In the late 1950s, Maag embarked on a fruitful relationship with the LSO, which yielded more Mozart and then classic accounts of Mendelssohn - the Scottish Symphony and music for A Midsummer Night's Dream - for which the conductor's lightness of touch and firm rhythmic hand were ideally suited. These qualities also found him at home in ballet - there are beautifully sprung accounts here of Les Sylphides and La Source - and the Italian operatic repertoire. As well as a long-prized disc of Rossini overtures, this box gathers up Maag's pioneering recording of a forerunner to Fidelio, Paer's Leonora, and Verdi's Schiller-rarity, Luisa Miller, with a cast led by Luciano Pavarotti (who had already worked on the piece with the conductor for Italian radio). Maag brought the best out of both vocal and instrumental soloists, and many of his records find him in the role of accompanist, to Julius Katchen near the start of his career and Barry Tuckwell for his first Decca recording, with the late Fou Ts'ong in 1962, and to Peter Jablonski and Joshua Bell near the end. In between he made a trio of less-familar albums for Deutsche Grammophon, a suave foil to Heinz Holliger in Baroque oboe concertos, to Edith Peinemann in Dvor�k's Violin Concerto and Ravel's Tzigane, and to the Danish Heldentenor Ticho Parly for a Wagner recital. Jablonski and Tuckwell contribute personal reminiscences of working with Maag for the booklet notes.

Kurt Masur's burnished readings of Brahms's orchestral music with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, issued as a Limited Edition box with Original Jackets. Hardly less than with it's founder, Felix Mendelssohn, the Leipzig Gewandhaus grew up with Brahms conducting and playing. For a sense of heritage, the orchestra boasts a Brahms tradition second to none. In the words of Kurt Masur, their Kapellmeister for over a quarter of a century, 'if they play Brahms, you can say it's still authentic'. Eloquence has compiled the Brahms recordings they made together between 1973 and 1981 for both the East-German Eterna label and Philips. Together they form the most comprehensive documentation yet issued of a musical relationship between composer, conductor and ensemble that was uniformly distinguished by deep understanding and affection. From the keyboard lion's roaring of the First Piano Concerto to the rage and reconciliation of the Third Symphony and the mellow reflections of the Double Concerto, Masur and the Leipzigers present Brahms in the round. 'Tradition is everything to the Gewandhaus,' said Masur. 'It's what gives us our identity. It's why we sound like ourselves and not like any other orchestra.' The bedrock of that sound is a strong, unified string section with a density of timbre that supplies all the required weight for the post-Beethovenian drama of the First and Fourth symphonies. Masur maintained a narrow, brightly illuminated palette of wind tone-colours that lends a ruddy glow to the more pastoral tones of the Second as well as the rustic orchestrations of the Hungarian Dances and the oboe-led slow movement of the Violin Concerto. The 1978 recording of the concerto finds it's soloist Salvatore Accardo on his most honeyed and alluring form, contrastingly partnered in the Double Concerto by the gruffer, more outspoken tones of the cellist Heinrich Schiff. Masur and the Gewandhaus made several recordings of the piano concertos; Eloquence returns to the earliest and least-familiar of them, made with the American pianist Misha Dichter in 1977 when he was a peerless exponent of Liszt, in performances that grab the listener by the scruff of the neck and never let go.

The inspirational French maestro on disc: an unrivalled retrospective, covering three decades of incandescent music-making, including recordings new to CD and long unavailable, newly remastered and comprehensively documented. In the memories of most record-buyers, Charles Munch was indelibly and almost exclusively associated with the RCA label, thanks to a string of spectacular albums made during his thirteen-year-long tenure as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. From telecasts of that era too is fixed the image of the white-haired, square-jawed maestro urging on his Boston musicians to ever greater heights of intensity with gestures of both elemental passion and delicious legerdemain. These qualities were also present, however, in the recordings made by Munch for several other labels throughout his career. They have now been brought together by Eloquence in a set that offers the most rounded portrait yet of the conductor throughout his career. His earliest recordings were made in Paris for Polydor and for L'Oiseau-Lyre in 1938, of concertante works by Ravel, Widor (the rarely heard Fantasie for piano and orchestra) and Haydn: these have been newly transferred from original masters by Mark Obert-Thorn. From the beginning of his postwar contract with Decca come London-made recordings of French repertoire (Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy, Faur�, Franck, Ravel, Roussel, Saint-Sa�ns) and Austro-German symphonies (Beethoven 8, Mendelssohn 5, Schumann 4), conducting the orchestra of the Soci�t� des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris which he had led since 1939. In these performances, sustained throughout by a sweeping legato line, we may recall Munch's insistence that 'To be a conductor is not a m�tier but rather a sacred rite'. This is no less true of a ragged but thrilling 'Path�tique' Symphony from 1948, now recorded in Paris. After the Boston years, Munch struck up a partnership with the New Philharmonia Orchestra (1965-57), which yielded albums of Bizet, Offenbach and Respighi in which the conjuror's magic fire remained undimmed. He also returned with them to a suite from Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane ballet which was always a Munch favourite in concert. His last studio account - from Budapest in 1966 - of the Symphonie fantastique is also here, having appeared on Fidelio, Hungaroton and Philips, but long unavailable. The set concludes with more Berlioz - Munch's sole recording for Deutsche Grammophon, of the Grande messe des morts. This was made in Munich in 1967, the year before his death, and is a moving testament to the conductor's career-long dedication to realizing the most original orchestral and acoustic possibilities explored by a composer who, like Munch himself, always went his own way.

A collection of six short stories for Christmas, written and adapted for American children of the 1940s and 1950s and featuring stars of the silver screen, including several first-time official CD issues. The celebrity narrators include Bing Crosby (The Small One), Loretta Young (The Littlest Angel), Gregory Peck (Lullaby of Christmas), Ronald Colman (A Christmas Carol), Charles Laughton (Mr. Pickwick's Christmas). In the days when families gathered around the wireless and the radiogram, Christmas stories made popular entertainment for children and adults alike. The most successful of them were transferred to record with musical accompaniments supervised by experienced Hollywood hands, none more so than Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Hitchcock's composer of choice, who in 1944 composed and conducted a score to an adaptation by Orson Welles of Oscar Wilde's tale of The Happy Prince. Bing Crosby took the part of the Prince, and two years later became narrator for a new story by Charles Tazewell, The Small One. Two further Tazewell stories for radio captured the imagination of the American public in 1948 and became Christmas-time fixtures, rather like The Snowman on British TV in the 1980s. The Littlest Angel and Lullaby of Christmas both told a touching tale, in the tradition of Andersen's Little Match Girl but with a happy ending, of a child whose fortunes are transformed at Christmas time. When Decca released them as 78s and 10-inch LPs, they were narrated by Loretta Young and Gregory Peck respectively. According to Peck, 'This is the holiday drama I've always hoped to find'. English leads were used for the two English stories recorded by American Decca: Ronald Colman as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, and Charles Laughton as Mr. Pickwick in another Dickensian picture of poor souls redeemed by kindness at Christmas time - this last scored by none other than Hanns Eisler, seven years before he fled the US after being denounced by the Committee for Un-American Activities. In all these tales, there is a warmth and a delight in the telling that struck a chord in their audiences of the 40s and 50s, and will do so again in these newly remastered transfers.

From Monteverdi to Brahms via French Baroque rarities: the Decca Gold (US) legacy of Nadia Boulanger, a complete musician. Newly remastered and issued complete for the first time, with fascinating liner notes by Nigel Simeone. Original Jackets, Limited Edition. Composer, teacher, organist, pianist, harpsichordist, choir trainer, conductor, musicologist: there seemed to be no end to the talents of Nadia Boulanger though she liked to insist that her gifts paled in comparison to her tragically short-lived sister, Lili. Nadia compensated with ceaseless industry. By the time of her early twenties, having studied with Faur� and undertaken the famously rigorous Paris Conservatoire formation, she was already reviving Bach cantatas in concert. In this guise she came to the attention of the American heiress and assiduous sponsor of avant-garde culture in Paris, the Princesse de Polignac, and with her support founded a vocal consort which made valuable and often-reissued HMV recordings of Monteverdi and Brahms in the 1930s. Boulanger's postwar recordings for American Decca, while also made in Paris, are much less widely known, having been issued on Brunswick LPs with limited availability outside the US and on Decca Gold in the US. Having returned to Paris after her wartime exile on the American east coast, she revived her consort for concerts at the Polignac salon, drawing together the most resilient of her older colleagues, such as the tenor Hugues Cu�nod, with younger vocal talents such as Nadine Sautereau and Irma Kolassi, who had already established an international career for themselves but were devoted to Boulanger and her tender tyranny in securing precise, selfless and stylish performances of a repertoire that was still largely the exclusive property of scholars rather than musicians. As well as returning to Monteverdi, the American Decca sessions of 1952-54 venture into what was then much less familiar territory, of chansons and madrigals by the likes of Josquin, Lassus and Le Jeune, winding up with a typically flamboyant Jan�quin showpiece which imitates an entire aviary. Then there are pioneering records of excerpts from music-dramas by Charpentier and Rameau, and finally a return to Brahms's domestic vocal music, though as with Monteverdi in 'new' and complementary repertoire, the Neue Liebeslieder and a selection from the more introspective late vocal quartets Opp. 92 and 112. On all these records Boulanger's affection for the music shines through, as well as her scrupulous attention to the detail of it's expression.