If you are only ever going to have one collection of the orchestral works of Edward Elgar, let it be this collection led by John Barbirolli. Recorded in stereo by EMI between 1962 and 1966, the sound is amazingly lush, ripe, and deep. Performed by the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the New Philharmonia, the Sinfonia of London, and the Hallé ...
It is so astounding that the young Daniel Barenboim plays Brahms' piano concertos with almost incredible strength and nearly unbelievable virtuosity in these vintage 1967 EMI recordings that it might have been too much to ask for him to have played them with more than haphazard accuracy or cursory sensitivity. Yet though Barenboim roars over the D ...
This is not the classic 1965 Jacqueline du Pré / John Barbirolli / London Symphony Orchestra recording of Elgar's profoundly elegiac Cello Concerto. This is a previously unreleased live recording made by du Pré and Barbirolli in Prague two years later with the BBC Symphony. Is it as good? No, of course, not: the 1965 du Pré / Barbirolli recording ...
While there have been Butterflies more vulnerable -- de Los Angeles -- more emotional -- Freni -- more lacerating -- Tebaldi -- and more imperious -- Callas, there was always something especially endearing about Renata Scotto's Butterfly. Call it humanity. Scotto's Butterfly is not a histrionic heroine but a woman blinded by love doomed by her ...
At the end of the nineteenth century, nearly every theater company in Europe apparently felt compelled to put on a performance of Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist drama Pelléas et Mélisande. Those that could afford it would hire a composer to write incidental music for it. In Finland there was a production of Pelléas, and, naturally, Jean Sibelius ...
What a brilliant coupling: Strauss' magnificently optimistic Ein Heldenleben, his musical-autobiographical reincarnation of himself and his wife as Siegfried and Brünnhilde, followed by Mahler's monumentally pessimistic "Tragic" Symphony, his musical-autobiographical reincarnation of himself and his wife as Othello and Desdemona. In these two ...
With the widespread popularity of stereophonic sound by 1957, it is perplexing that this 1966 recording of Brahms' second piano concerto would be made in monaural sound. Still more puzzling is why more was not done during remastering to brighten the sound. The result is an overall unsatisfactory sound quality wherein only the instrument that ...
For lovers of English tone poems and fans of post-Romantic orchestral music at its most lush and expansive, these classic performances by Sir John Barbirolli are essential listening. Recorded in the 1960s with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra, the performances of works by Arnold Bax, Frederick Delius, and John Ireland have a ...
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