Bliss: The Decca Originals: a new collection of Decca recordings of Bliss's music, including tracks previously unreleased on Decca CD as well as the complete version of the Violin Concerto with Alfredo Campoli. The career of Arthur Bliss was launched in London in the 1920s with provocative ensemble pieces such as Rout, but it was established by the Colour Symphony which Sir Edward Elgar invited him to write for the Three Choirs Festival. Bliss gradually became an establishment figure, appointed Master of the Queen's Music in 1953 and a fluent maker of music celebrating Englishness (such as Welcome the Queen, 1954) at a time when notions of national identity were coming under scrutiny as never before. However, Bliss always retained something of the dashing provocateur about him, and his best music often had a terse and anguished quality - such as the Introduction and Allegro which filled out the first LP of the Colour Symphony, or the score he wrote for the H.G. Wells film, Things to Come, or the Second String Quartet. These premiere, composer-conducted and -supervised recordings from the 1950s are reissued here, along with a genuine rarity, Baraza: a concertante movement for piano and orchestra crafted from the film music he wrote for Men of Two Worlds. In 1955 Bliss responded to a BBC commission with his most accomplished work in the concerto genre, written with the violinist Alfredo Campoli in mind. The premiere enjoyed a great success, and a Decca recording soon followed. However, the composer remained dissatisfied by the length of the concerto, and having recorded it complete, ensured that certain cuts were made for the first release. This missing material has been restored and the whole recording newly remastered, presenting on CD for the first time the complete score of the Concerto as it's composer and first soloist recorded it.

Mozart was Josef Krips's yardstick in music: 'My maxim is that everything has to sound as though it were by Mozart, or it will be a bad performance. ' Collected here are his Mozart symphony recordings with the Concertgebouworkest for Philips (1972-73), including a rehearsal sequence for Symphony No. 33, as well as the celebrated 1955 Vienna Don Giovanni for Decca. These are surrounded by the rare 'live' recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, his stereo Decca recordings of symphonies by Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and a previously unpublished overture by Weber. LIMITED EDITION. By the time stereo technology had become standard in the mid-1950s, Josef Krips had built an impressive recorded legacy for Decca documented in a companion set of mono recordings from Eloquence (Josef Krips Edition - Volume 1). Decca captured the conductor in several stereo remakes of canon repertoire - the last two symphonies of Schubert, Schumann's Fourth, the 'Haffner' and 'Jupiter' of Mozart - always with something deeper and wiser to say about repertoire which he had been exploring for 40 years and more, affording absorbing comparisons with his mono versions. Complementing his mono-era version of Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Krips recorded a stereo Don Giovanni, now with a more international, less Viennese cast headed by the vocally sensuous Don of Cesare Siepi and complemented by Fernando Corena as Leporello. Other vocal treasures in the set include Inge Borkh on imperious form in Beethoven, Weber and the closing scene of Strauss's Salome. Also located in the Decca archive was a stereo recording of Weber's Oberon Overture, now published for the first time. With the Vienna Symphony Orchestra we have a live recording of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with star soloists Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Too little of Krips's work outside the Austro-German canon was preserved on record, as the beautifully moulded shape and definition of his 1958 Vienna Philharmonic version of Tchaikovsky's Fifth demonstrates. You would easily guess from it that Mozart was Krips's yardstick in music, and for Philips he finally made a thorough-going survey of the mid-period and mature symphonies, from No. 21 onwards, which he had performed throughout his life. When released in France in harness with the early symphonies led by Marriner, the set included Krips leading a rehearsal sequence of Symphony No. 33 with his characteristically affable authority, and this has been released internationally for the first time on CD. As for the symphonies themselves, Krips sustains them with a natural warmth and breathing pulse that has always placed them in the top rank of 'traditional' performances. The conductor's legacy is addressed in a new essay by Niek Nelissen. Photos and original jackets evoke the 50s and 60s as much as Krips's music-making.