The title of this disc ought to have been, to paraphrase Eileen Farrell, “I Gotta Right to Sing Bel Canto”. Certainly a voice as purely
This is the first and best of Joan Sutherland’s two recorded Normas. Despite La Stupenda’s aversion to consonants, her singing is stunning in a killer
This Traviata features a cast headlined by stars of the operatic firmament circa 1962–Joan Sutherland, Carlo Bergonzi, and Robert Merrill. Alas, it’s a Traviata without
At long last Decca reissues Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt’s Vienna Philharmonic Beethoven cycle from the 1960s in full, together with the conductor’s accounts of the concertos, featuring
Forget the spaced out photo of Thibaudet on the cover, the meaningless title (“The Magic of Satie”), or the flipside tray card photo in which
Rachmaninov’s transcriptions largely date from his concert-giving years, and it is likely that he tailored their considerable difficulties to suit his own massive, infallible hands.
This set restores most of Decca’s Maazel/Vienna Philharmonic Tchaikovsky symphony cycle to circulation at mid-price. These detailed but over-bright transfers tend to exaggerate the many
These recordings of Haydn’s six “Paris” symphonies were made in Geneva in April 1962. Ernest Ansermet directs what sounds like a moderate-sized ensemble, scaled down
Beginning with a stodgy and gruff Academic Festival Overture with out-of-sync percussion and an out-of-tune orchestra, these Brahms performances have to rank among the more
Herbert von Karajan’s Beethoven Seventh circa 1959 contains many of the same performance characteristics familiar from his later remakes (three in all) with the Berlin