Limited Edition 10CD box set. The Lindsay String Quartet's award-winning and first Beethoven cycle (1979-83), originally recorded for ASV: risk-taking musicianship at the highest level. 'We had spent more time on rehearsing and trying to understand Beethoven than any other composer: he was a God to us,' writes cellist Bernard Gregor-Smith. Through the course of their 40-year career, the Lindsay String Quartet was synonymous above all with the string quartets of Beethoven. They began playing together in 1966 while still students at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Six years later, Ronald Birks took the second violin chair to join leader Peter Cropper, violist Roger Bigley and cellist Bernard Gregor-Smith. As the quartet in residence at the universities of Sheffield and Manchester, they began to scale the monuments of the repertoire, and they developed a collective identity - 'the Lindsays' sound' - which became much better known once they started to record the quartets of Beethoven for the Enigma label in the late 1970s. Opp 74 and then the six Op 18 quartets were released as analogue LPs before the Lindsays moved to the ASV label and recorded the rest of the cycle with new digital technology. Instantly recognisable even now and quite distinct from the ensembles of note who came before and after them, the Lindsays always sounded like a quartet of four discrete and entirely individual personalities. They soon became celebrated for a fierce, even ferocious commitment to both the notes on the page (taking Beethoven's repeat marks seriously when it was still unfashionable to do so) and to the sometimes rough, often tough and yet elevated spirit of music that still sets a benchmark for both ensembles and listeners. The Lindsays left nothing in the rehearsal studio, even when the red light was on. Already in this first cycle, the Lindsays take chances, stress the forward-looking nature of Beethoven's writing, and put interpretation ahead of finesse. When the late quartets were released together, they won the 1984 Gramophone Chamber Award. The ensemble re-recorded the entire cycle for ASV in the 1990s: the Lindsays sound remained the same while the interpretations evolved over the decades, becoming not objectively better but different. Parts of the first cycle such as Op. 131 go to greater extremes of tempo and dynamic in search of Beethoven's elusive truth: the opening fugue almost hangs in mid-air. Yet there is no shortage of fire in the belly of the C minor Op. 18 No. 4 or grace and wit in the 'Razumovsky' scherzos. This landmark set in Beethoven interpretation is reissued by Eloquence with a new booklet essay by Tully Potter, exploring the place of the Lindsays within the context of the great string quartets.

LIMITED EDITION. A unique collection of L'Oiseau-Lyre, Argo, Decca and Philips albums in original covers, showcasing both the genius of Handel and the musicianship of the classic ASMF/Marriner pairing at it's most stylish. Even while a member of the London Symphony Orchestra in the early 1950s, Neville Marriner had made recordings for L'Oiseau-Lyre as a violinist in the Jacobean Ensemble. Accordingly, he took a tape of a concerto grosso to the label's legendary owner, Louise Hanson-Dyer. The artists on it were his new ensemble, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. This modest demonstration tape ultimately led to more than 500 recordings, and the success of the Academy with Marriner as the world's most recorded partnership. Handel was an integral part of the Academy's work firstly for L'Oiseau-Lyre, then for Argo, finally for the Dutch label Philips. (Marriner and the Academy also recorded music by Handel for EMI.) Without including later duplicate versions, this box compiles for the first time all the ASMF/Marriner albums made for the Decca family of labels as well as Philips between 1961 and 1997, amounting to a comprehensive survey of the composer's orchestral music, ornamented with Acis and Galatea, Messiah, Jephtha and the Coronation Anthems. Critics from the outset praised not just the energy of the Academy and Marriner in Handel's Concerti grossi, but also their Polish, at a time when period-instrument versions were technically unreliable. Soloists such as the oboist Roger Lord emerged naturally from an ensemble of soloists in the first place. A succession of keyboard players pays testament to the determination of Marriner to find a degree of authenticity in 18th-century music that worked practically for him and his colleagues. First of all his friend Thurston Dart, who researched the sources for much of the music played here, and the mercurial choir director and harpsichordist George Malcolm. In a later generation came Andrew Davis and Christopher Hogwood, the organist on the Argo Messiah which was recorded using his edition. All the vocal works are cast from strength, including Elly Ameling and Philip Langridge in Messiah, Jill Gomez and Robert Tear in Acis and Galatea, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Emma Kirkby in Jephtha. Tear is also heard in a lesser-known 1969 album of German and English arias. From 1997, Dmitri Hvorostovsky is heard in Handel excerpts from his 'Arie antiche' album, testifying to the durability of a marriage between ensemble, conductor and composer which survived tumultuous artistic change. Further highlights include the classic Fireworks/Water Music pairing from 1971, ballet music from Ariodante and Alcina (also Argo), the Concerti a due cori from 1979 and the digital-era Philips album of Coronation Anthems, as well as a curiosity: two choruses from Messiah recorded in the studio as a promotional item for the forthcoming recording on Philips of the complete oratorio from Dublin. Handel was their home territory, as Peter Quantrill illustrates in a booklet essay discussing the history of the Academy and Marriner with Handel's music. Philip Stuart, author of Marriner and the Academy: A Record Partnership, contributes a 'sessionography'.

Hans Christian Andersen, the film, was produced in the spring of 1952 and released on 25 November in New York, with general release following in December that year. It was one of the top ten grossing films of the year, but was not well received in Andersen's hometown of Odense, when it was released in Denmark in September 1953. It was nominated for six Academy Awards: Best Color Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Set Decoration (Color), Best Costume Design (Color), Best Scoring of a Musical Picture (Walter Scharf), Best Song ('Thumbelina'), and Best Sound Recording. Decca (US) recorded the soundtrack in August that year and the songs were originally released as a series of four 78rpm singles, with two songs per disc, a 45rpm album, and a ten-inch LP. Danny Kaye took the lead, and when the album was reissued (on Decca and MCA) on a twelve-inch LP, four further tracks were added: Tubby the Tuba as well as it's less-well-known sequel, Tubby the Tuba at the Circus, and two additional songs written by Kaye's wife, Sylvia Fine. Now, for the first time on a Universal Music label, the original tapes have been retrieved from the archive and newly remastered for release on Eloquence.

A landmark in Baroque opera recordings, newly remastered. This 'royal entertainment in music' was fashioned by Cavalli to a libretto by Giovanni Faustini for performance in Venice in 1644, two years after L'incoronazione di Poppaea saw the light of day. Through the course of Ormindo we follow the adventures of two pairs of lovers as they betray, deceive and flee from each other before the inevitable happy ending. A death scene in prison for the eponymous prince and his sweetheart Erisbe is marked by a grave pathos that sounds down the centuries - at least since Raymond Leppard exhumed the score from total obscurity. Conducting Ormindo at the 1967 Glyndebourne Festival, Leppard spearheaded the modern revival of Cavalli's fortunes. Critics noted the conductor's significant revisions and rearrangements, but they were almost unanimous in their gratitude at hearing and seeing on stage the work of a pioneering opera composer for the first time, and in performances that did full justice to both music and drama. Leppard and Glyndebourne assembled a sumptuous continuo section and cast well-schooled for the time in the ornate language of seventeenth-century Venetian opera. The popular and critical success of Ormindo at Glyndebourne gave rise to a sequel, with Leppard's similarly imaginative realization of Calisto, which has also been reissued by Eloquence (482 9382). L'Ormindo has long been unavailable and the package includes Raymond Leppard's original note and a synopsis.

The two stereo Beethoven cycles, those of the Symphonies (1965-70) and the Piano Concertos (with Wilhelm Backhaus, 1958-59), form the core of this edition of the complete Decca recordings of Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (1900-1973). It is distinguished by the Wiener Philharmoniker's unique transparency of sound allied to a firm pulse and rhythmic drive which characterized Schmidt-Isserstedt's conducting. Several of the recordings were produced by Erik Smith, the conductor's son. Though it appears that he never stood in front of the Vienna Philharmonic in a concert, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt achieved a remarkable rapport with a famously headstrong group of musicians when he conducted them in two stereo Beethoven cycles for Decca. In 1958-59 they recorded the piano concertos with Wilhelm Backhaus, as a stereo remake for the pianist's mono Decca cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic and Clemens Krauss. Backhaus was in his late 70s by then, conveying a lifetime's wisdom through his fingers while playing with apparently undimmed vitality. The Decca producer for the concertos was the conductor's son, Erik Smith, and a familial sense of mutual respect and understanding may be one reason for the success of the symphony cycle made between 1965 and 1970. Schmidt-Isserstedt harnesses the unique transparency of the Vienna Philharmonic sound with the firm pulse and rhythmic drive which had always distinguished his conducting. The set has rarely left the catalogue since it was issued, because it's virtues have never gone out of fashion. Schmidt-Isserstedt's first recordings for Decca were made in the early 1950s, as founder-conductor of Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra, now known as the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. The ensemble began life after the war as a cultural project nurtured and supported by the British, and under Schmidt-Isserstedt's dedicated coaching it quickly became one of the most admired orchestras Europe. Their recordings of Dvor�k's Seventh and Tchaikovsky's Fifth symphonies were made in state-of-the-art Decca mono sound, produced by John Culshaw. As the reputation of the NDR orchestra spread internationally during the 1960s, so did that of it's conductor, who became a welcome and familiar presence in front of the London orchestras. He exerts gentle and sovereign authority over the London Symphony Orchestra on a 1967 album of Mozart concertos in partnership with Vladimir Ashkenazy. This Eloquence set is issued with original covers and a new essay by Peter Quantrill on Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and his Decca legacy.

A new-world virtuoso with old-world musicianship: the complete Decca recordings of JOSHUA BELL, capturing the first decade of the violinist's career on record. Decca signed the nineteen-year-old Joshua Bell in 1986 on the basis of privately made concerto tapes. Bell had first picked up a violin at the age of four, but he had been taking the instrument seriously for less than a decade. His musicianship and technical aptitude were nurtured and coached by Josef Gingold, a pupil of Eugène Ysaÿe. He made astonishingly rapid progress. Within months of signing for Decca, he had already made his first three albums, of concertos by Bruch, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Wieniawski, and recital encores. Unfashionably, Bell felt especially drawn to the Wieniawski, which reveals his affinity for older school of violin playing embodied by Gingold, Heifetz - and Fritz Kreisler, the central figure on a hugely successful 1995 recital album. But by then, Bell was already demonstrating the breadth of his musicianship, and striking up partnerships with the pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Olli Mustonen, and the cellist Steven Isserlis. These partnerships would last for decades to come, and yield deeply rewarding albums of French repertoire for Decca, including Chausson's Concert and Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Bell is now music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, who accompanied him back in 1988 for that Bruch/Mendelssohn coupling. In a sense, therefore, this new Eloquence box brings us full circle to an appreciation of a violinist who has always taken his talent seriously. He went on to record concertos by Brahms, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Barber and Walton, and his playing inspired the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis to write a concertante Air which he recorded for Argo. Previously only issued in the US, this Kernis album now joins the violinist's Decca discography in this new Eloquence box, which is compiled with original album covers and annotated with a new appreciation of the violinist by Tully Potter.

A priceless collection of Hans Knappertsbusch's opera recordings made for Universal Music labels, including the legendary live Parsifal performances of both 1951 and 1962, the Vienna studio Die Meistersinger of 1950-51, the Munich Fidelio of 1961, as well as operatic excerpts and highlights. For singers such as Birgit Nilsson, Jon Vickers, George London and Hans Hotter, Knappertsbusch was the supreme Wagnerian. Audiences at the 1951 Bayreuth Festival were enraptured by the many beauties of his Parsifal - not only it's patience but it's steady unfolding, as if in a ritual, and the Decca recording became the first complete set of the opera on LP. Reissued on CD by many different labels, it returns to Decca here in the company of the 1962 account from Bayreuth, quicker and more flexible and perhaps even more attuned to the human drama of Wagner's final opera. Perhaps no one has conducted Parsifal more frequently than Knappertsbusch: over 200 times during a career that spanned just over half a century. His Wagner interpretations gained their unique authority from his study of the operas at Bayreuth under the direction of Hans Richter and the composer's son, Siegfried. His career was centred around performing all the mature music-dramas at the State Operas of Vienna and Munich, and latterly at Bayreuth. He had a bond of particular affection with the Vienna Philharmonic, and recorded albums of Wagnerian excerpts with them throughout the 1950s, including the Wesendonck Lieder and the First Act of Die Walk�re with Kirsten Flagstad. The complete studio recording of Die Meistersinger, from 1950-51, belies the idea that Knappertsbusch did not respond to a studio environment; it remains one of the most heart-warming accounts on disc. The same broad vein of humanism runs through his Fidelio recording with the Bavarian State Opera from 1961 and a strong cast led by a still youthful-sounding Jan Peerce and Sena Jurinac. Albums of Wagnerian excerpts from Zurich in 1947 preserve the artistry of Maria Reining and Paul Sch�ffler at their peak. Much here has long been unavailable on Decca; newly remastered, compiled with a new essay on the conductor's life and career by Peter Quantrill, the set is an essential acquisition for both devotees and sceptics of Knappertsbusch's fallible genius.

A tribute to the late Ida Haendel, comprising her complete Decca Recordings (1940-1997), newly remastered, as well as her performances at the 1982 Huberman Festival. Lavishly illustrated, Original Jackets, Limited Edition. On her death in July 2020, obituaries worldwide paid glowing tributes to the effervescence of the violinist Ida Haendel, in both her playing and her person. Both with and without her bow, she captivated listeners and fellow musicians such as the cellist Steven Isserlis: 'She spoke through her violin, proved herself through it, lived within the music she made. She was a marvel, an icon; each note she played was the result of total conviction - and as a consequence was totally convincing. She had been groomed from the beginning to be a star - and a star she was.' It is those prodigious early years that enjoy belated attention in this new box of Haendel's collected Decca recordings. Her first recordings date from 1940, when Haendel, in her early teens, was accompanied by a fellow Polish �migr� Adele Kotowska in showpieces and encores. Her reputation in the UK had been secured by accomplished debuts at Wigmore Hall and the Queen's Hall Proms. Decca confidently invested in her promise, and were rewarded with albums that were consistently acclaimed for the violinist's warmth and depth of tone and virtuoso temperament, but also liveliness of musical response to a wide variety of repertoire, from a Schubert sonatina to violinistic fireworks by Kreisler and Sarasate. Haendel was soon paired with an equally brilliant young pianist, Noel Mewton-Wood, for a spry reading of Beethoven's Eighth Sonata, and then with Ivor Newton for more demanding modern repertoire such as Stravinsky's Divertimento and Bart�k's Romanian Folk Dances. Her recording career continued to flourish after the war with several well-received concerto discs of Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Sa�ns and Dvor�k: all made for 78s and long unavailable until the new remasterings by Mark Obert-Thorn in the present collection. However, despite the excellent reviews, Haendel's father elected to sign a contract with EMI and she ceased recording for Decca in September 1947. Haendel's return to the label had to wait almost 40 years, but a 1996 recital with Vladimir Ashkenazy of modern classics from eastern Europe - Szymanowski, Bart�k and Enescu - had critics and listeners alike marveling at her longevity and undimmed technical command. As well as a live account of the Sibelius Concerto from Israel in 1982 and a spoken memoir from the producer Evans Mirageas, this tribute is significantly enhanced by a previously unpublished late recording: Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, from 1997, with the London Philharmonic and Sir Roger Norrington, originally intended for release within a Vaughan Williams symphony cycle. A work new to Haendel's relatively slender discography, this will attract the attention of violin-lovers everywhere.

With technique to burn but poetry at the fore, Jean-Yves Thibaudets recordings of the two Liszt concertos have always held a special affection in many a music-lovers heart. They are reissued as per the original CD couplings - with the demonic Tot.

SCHOENBERG: GURRELIEDER

BEETHOVEN: FIDELIO

An A-Z of 23 conductors in a feast of classic recordings from Decca's early years - 1929-1949 - including the golden age of it's 'ffrr' technology. Newly remastered from the best available sources by Mark Obert-Thorn, Ward Marston and Andrew Hallifax, this comprehensively annotated and richly illustrated set features several new-to-CD releases. It is a must-have for any follower of historical recordings. Spanning almost twenty years, the unique story of this set begins in May 1929 with Decca's first major recording, Delius's Sea Drift - a performance whose merits were obscured at the time by surface noise, but which the latest technology reveals to be a gloriously sympathetic reading of Delius's poignant elegy. Back then, the conductor (Anthony Bernard) was not even printed on the 78 labels; yet, for a later recording in the set, a suite of Handel, the name of Erich Kleiber stands out: a sign of how far the label travelled in it's first twenty years, through some choppy commercial waters, to become a byword for technological excellence and world-class musical artistry drawn from around the globe. The pre-war recordings inevitably centre on British/Irish conducting talent, old and new: Hamilton Harty, dynamic in Haydn and Walton; Walton himself, in a definitive first recording of Fa�ade; atmospheric Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Coates from Henry Wood. One of the rarest items in the set is Bach's Concerto for Two Violins as led by Mengelberg in 1936. The post-war material includes several great names of the podium from those pre-war days, judiciously picked up by Decca when they might otherwise have been forgotten: Albert Coates whipping up a frenzy in the Russian repertoire he made his own; Clemens Krauss, incandescent in Strauss from Milan and London; Leo Blech's genial 'Surprise' Symphony of Haydn. Senior composer-conductors include Fitelberg in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3 and Enescu in Schumann's Second. Then there are thrilling young podium tyros who were setting London musical life alight in the postwar years: Celibidache's electrifying and wayward Tchaikovsky, Martinon's exquisite Ravel, Coppola's majestic Schumann. A note from the remastering engineer Andrew Hallifax explains the history behind this first-ever release of Handel choruses conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. Mark Obert-Thorn explains his choice of treasures for this box and introduces the history of Decca and it's revolutionary development of 'full frequency range recording' in the late 1940s. Peter Quantrill expands the historical perspective with notes on both Decca and each of the individual conductors in the box.

This was the first of two recordings by Ernest Ansermet of pell�as et m�lisande, a work he conducted several times on stage. This recording was made in April 1952 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere. Many performed it with Ansermet, who himself conducted the work nine times with his Suisse Romande orchestra. The booklet includes a track-by-track synopsis, an overview of the recording by Juan Pons, as well as a probing essay on Debussy's's opera by Ansermet himself which was printed with the first LP issue of this recording.

WAGNER: DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN (HIGHLIGHTS)

Real and Right and True marked the debut of prolific Australian composer Calvin Bowman on Decca (Australia). The album title is derived from a set of nine poems by celebrated Australian cartoonist, writer and painter Michael Leunig, whose beautiful painting 'Autumn Harvest' also graces the cover artwork. Bowman specializes in artsong and has, to date, written nearly a hundred songs with more constantly on the way. He is a laureate of the Ned Rorem Award for Song Composition, the Diana Barnhart American Song Competition, and the English Poetry and Song Society Artsong Award. Bowman is the only Australian composer to ever have been exclusively featured on the prestigious Decca label aside from Percy Grainger. His songs have been lauded by many luminaries including Barbara Bonney, Sir Neville Marriner and Lee Hoiby, and are recognized for their technical prowess and humanity. In this remarkable debut offering, three of Australia's finest singers - Sara Macliver, Paul McMahon and Christopher Richardson - join forces to record over fifty of Bowman's acclaimed artsongs. Full texts are included.

On two days in October 2016, Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and Australian cellist Catherine Hewgill went into the studio to make their first recording together. An all-Russian program, it features the Cello Sonatas of Shostakovich and Prokofiev with the added pendant of the Rachmaninov Vocalise in an arrangement by American cellist Leonard Rose. This is their first recording for Decca (Australia). The recording, entitled From Darkness to Light, 'reflects the many very dark passages in each of the two sonatas, which ultimately seem to resolve themselves into the possibility of universal light and hope,' says Ms. Hewgill, Principal Cellist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. 'I very much enjoyed working on this recording with Katie Hewgill. She is a very artistic and highly professional musician. Also, as I am Russian, it certainly feels very natural to me to identify with this great music,' says Vladimir Ashkenazy. Prokofiev's Cello Sonata sees the composer on his very best behavior. The astringent harmonies, the motoric rhythms, and the sardonic, sarcastic and pessimistic temperaments that characterized so much of his earlier music have been replaced with a more palatable lyricism, and an apparent willingness to please, instead of provoking. Shostakovich's Cello Sonata was written in the wake of a spell of notoriety. It was written in 1934, the same year as the premiere of his 'shocking' opera Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk District and was completed on 19 September that year, a week before he turned 28 and was his first important chamber work.

Sir Adrian Boult's first Messiah for Decca, newly remastered and coupled with a rare L'Oiseau-Lyre recording of the Bach Magnificat, new to CD. When this Messiah was released in 1954, critics were quick to recognise it as exemplifying the English oratorio tradition at it's finest. Boult used a large chorus - the London Philharmonic Choir, singing with superb discipline and clarity of articulation - but he rejected both the monumental style of performance cultivated by Sir Malcolm Sargent and the anachronistic trappings of Sir Thomas Beecham's Handel. Boult slimmed down the LPO to chamber-orchestra dimensions, though he did not neglect the oratorio's moments of grandeur, pathos and splendour. Almost everywhere, the recorded sound belies it's age. With mono this vivid and with bass frequencies this powerful, few will pine for stereo. Each orchestral section is sharply delineated: a glint of oboe timbre here, a welcome emphasis on the bottom line's crunchy bassoon timbre there. In fact his stereo remake from seven years later (with the London Symphony Orchestra) has a more old-fashioned feel, due at least in part to a more operatically scaled team of soloists. In 1954 Boult's cast was led by the elegant and imperious soprano of Jennifer Vyvyan. The male soloists, too, found favour with Benjamin Britten when casting his operas; the recording is particularly valuable as a rare example on records of the artistry of the American tenor George Maran: always well-focused, assured from top to bottom of the register. More British singers on top form may be enjoyed in the coupling, a recording of Bach's Magnificat made in 1955 for L'Oiseau-Lyre by the London-based Kalmar Chamber Orchestra and St Anthony Singers. The Swiss conductor Pierre Colombo, little known now, presides over a rhythmically vital account, lent a further 'period' feel by the stylish contributions of both the countertenor Alfred Deller and the slender, pure-toned soprano member of the Deller Consort, Eileen McLoughlin. This reissue is further enhanced by a new essay by R.J. Stove, contextualising both the works and these marvellous performances.

Romanticist and classicist, modernist and conservative, the violinist Joseph Szigeti defied classification. His wide repertoire ranged from Bach to Bart�k and beyond, and he played it all with skill and understanding, becoming known as 'the thinking man's virtuoso'. Issued internationally and complete, for the first time on CD in this Limited Edition original-jackets collection, these Mercury recordings were made in New York and London during the autumn of Szigeti's career, between 1959 and 1961. The original Mercury tapes have been given new high-definition transfers at Abbey Road Studios, and then remastered by Thomas Fine.

A clear crowd favorite at the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition with his incendiary technique and warm stage presence, Moye Chen was awarded the George Frederick Boyle Prize and was signed to Universal Music Australia shortly after. On this luscious recording, the Chinese pianist coalesces four worlds as he traces the journey of three composer-pianists who, like Chen himself, followed their destinies to the 'New World'. Russians Sergei Rachmaninov and Vladimir Horowitz both found renewed fame in America, and Percy Grainger's uncommon musical versatility found a second voice when he moved from Australia via England to America. Who can fail to be seduced by Gershwin's Love Walked In in the smoochy transcription by Percy Grainger? Or his Londonderry Air. Vladimir Horowitz, one of the greatest virtuosos of all time, makes an appearance as both composer and transcriber. Rachmaninov is one of Moye Chen's many specialties and he presents a range of pieces from this composer's output - the gorgeous Melodie, the cheeky transcription of the 'Menuet' from Bizet's L'Arl�sienne, and the all-engulfing Second Sonata.

Over the course of the 1990s, the Scottish pianist Gordon Fergus-Thompson recorded five albums of Scriabin on the ASV label. Long unavailable, they are compiled and reissued here for the first time complete with original booklet essays by Bryce Morrison. Interviewed in 1995, at roughly the halfway point of the series, Fergus-Thompson remarked that he found 'an essential continuity in Scriabin's language. There's a special sort of logic in the progress from the First to the Tenth Sonata. Scriabin was a new, entirely original kind of composer/pianist and even in his earliest works his flightiness and volatility are paramount. It's an extraordinary experience playing and recording this music, alternately exhilarating and unnerving.' Renowned both for his Debussy and his Rachmaninov, Fergus-Thompson is thus ideally equipped to elucidate the transient, haunted world of Scriabin. His playing strikes a balance between precision and spontaneity, between intellect and emotion. He faithfully mirrors the development of Scriabin's style as it departs from the sideways romance of the Op. 3 Mazurkas and becomes increasingly fragmented, full of tensions abruptly set up and terminated. At the point where the series itself was terminated in 2001, Fergus-Thompson had recorded the complete Etudes, Preludes and many other shorter pieces as well as six of the ten sonatas (Nos. 2-5, 9 and 10). Throughout the series, critics noted his refined tonal elegance, fully conveyed by the spacious and detailed ASV recording, and his innate feeling for Scriabin's superfine intricacy and exotically perfumed harmonies in the later music.

AGE OF BEL CANTO

Newly remastered and gathered under one roof for the first time, the Decca recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Bruckner: a legendary combination. For record collectors in the 1950s and 60s, the names of Bruckner and Knappertsbusch ('Kna') were practically synonymous. At a time when the composer's symphonies were routinely compared to Gothic cathedrals, the rough grandeur, steady pulse and towering climaxes of these readings marked out the conductor as an architect of symphonic majesty. Record companies did not have to work hard to cultivate this image, thanks to Knappertsbusch's craggy visage, imposing presence on the podium and decades of Wagnerian experience at Bayreuth. At a time when Wagner's Parsifal was still experienced as a primarily sacred music drama, the major works of Bruckner were likewise understood in semi-sacred terms as concert-hall rites, and who better to pierce their mysteries than Parsifal's pre-eminent interpreter? Knappertsbusch began recording Bruckner for Decca in 1954, with the Third. The Fourth and Fifth quickly followed, also from Vienna, and then the Eighth arrived as an appendix from Munich, first issued on the Westminster label in 1963. By then the conductor's readings of Romantic repertoire had become less impulsive, even more monumental in concept, but still lightened by a natural feeling for the dance rhythms in Bruckner's scherzos and L�ndler themes. Knappertsbusch persisted in conducting from editions prepared by Bruckner's pupils, notably the Schalk brothers, with their liberal re-scorings and cuts, to the finales in particular - all outlined in a perceptive booklet essay by Antony Hodgson. In the light of recent scholarship and a more nuanced perspective on Bruckner's evolving intentions with the composing and revising of his symphonies, these performances gain a certain, compelling authenticity of their own. No Brucknerian can afford to be without them.

Three exceptionally rare Decca LPs of a much prized French pianist, newly remastered and released on CD for the first time. Rheumatism forced Agnelle Bundervo�t to retire from the platform at the peak of her career in the late 1950s, though she continued to pass on to her students at the Conservatoire of Versailles the beautifully defined articulation, mastery of high expressive contrasts, and remarkable rhythmic drive that distinguish the recordings of Schumann, Brahms and Liszt on this collection, which will attract the attention of all pianophiles. One of those students was Fr�d�ric Gaussin, who contributes a personal memoir and authoritative survey of her life and career to this Eloquence collection. He remembers Bundervo�t as a very demanding teacher: 'implacable but fair, generous, an acute psychologist, a spiritual person, dispensing pieces, studies and writing exercises with the knowledge and far-sightedness of a world-class physician'. Born in 1922, Bundervo�t began to learn the piano at the age of four, and within three years she was enrolled at the conservatoire in Marseilles. She was accepted at the Paris Conservatoire by the age of ten, even though she was too young to undertake the formal program of study, but the pedagogue Lazare-Levy recognized her exceptional intellect, prodigious technique and innate musical gifts. She was awarded the conservatoire's Premier Prix for six years in succession, and her talents extended beyond the piano to singing, organ playing and choir directing. Her first album, a Bach recital, was awarded a Grand Prix du Disque, but she was dissatisfied with the engineering of the Ducretet-Thomson recording; the trio of Decca albums (recorded in 1955-57) enjoys a far wider dynamic range and a much richer timbral palette, more faithfully capturing the elegance and refinement of her playing in the flesh. They hardly reflect the breadth of her repertoire, which took in much new music, but they now count as a precious testament to a notable if now little-known inheritor of the French piano tradition.

A landmark tribute to Roger Desormiere, a great French conductor of the mid-twentieth century, including many recordings new to CD. A car crash in March 1953 cruelly cut short the career of Roger Desormiere, who at the age of 53 had already established a reputation as one of the most insightful French conductors of his or any previous era. The resulting stroke left him barely able to communicate, incapable of work. His pupils, including Pierre Boulez, were distraught, but Desormiere clung on for thirteen painful years, eventually dying a broken man. Desormiere's legacy on disc is a case of what might have been. Record companies showed little interest in recording the modern repertoire of which he was so stylish and dedicated an interpreter, at least the equal in this regard of Hans Rosbaud and Rene Leibowitz. His one indisputable classic of the gramophone is the 1941 HMV recording of Pelleas et Melisande, but he recorded much else for several different labels. The present set brings together all his Decca recordings for the first time, made in mono between 1947 and 1951, newly remastered and constituting a substantial tribute to a musician of manifold gifts. As a regular conductor of both the Ballets Suedois and the Ballets Russes in Paris, Desormiere gave the premieres of Satie's last two ballets; Decca captured his mastery of ballet conducting in suites of Scarlatti, Chopin, Delibes and Tchaikovsky. Of music from his own time there is Poulenc's Les Biches, and the Divertissement of Ibert from 1951 (his final Decca recording), both done with the most refined ear for orchestral texture. His disc of lyric and coloratura arias with Janine Micheau unites him with a singer who, like him, brought a light touch to everything she did. On a visit to London in May 1947 Desormiere undertook his only recording assignment for Decca in the UK, recording in a single day Bizet's Jeux d'enfants and Patrie Overture, Debussy's Marche ecossaise and Chabrier's Habanera, in Kingsway Hall, with Sidney Beer's body of freelance players, the National Symphony Orchestra. Every other recording was made with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, and each one has a character as Parisian as the Tuileries and the Bateaux-mouches.

O Lungo Drom translates as 'The Long Road' in Romanes. This large-scale work, scored for a chamber ensemble including soprano, baritone, flute, clarinet, cimbalom, piano and string quartet, integrates texts from all around the world into an oratorio to create a Lied of the scattered Sinti and Roma. Members of the minority have lived in Europe for over 700 years. Since that time, they have been subjected to constant discrimination and persecution - punctuated by infernal periods of enslavement and genocide. 'The Long Road' is a road of longing, of yearning, a path that leads to and from remembrance; each step and footprint on this road, imbued with a profound sense of Fernweh, embraces hope and beauty through resilience and consolation. O Lungo Drom sets the words of thirteen different poets and writers from this minority in ten languages and Romanes dialects. Full texts and translations are included.