Legacy

  • Shura Cherkassky: Saint-Saëns & Liszt

    Shura Cherkassky was born in Odessa, Ukraine in 1909 and died in London in 1995. He was initially taught by his mother who had played for Tchaikovsky, but when the family moved to the US in 1923, he studied with his long-time teacher and mentor, the legendary Josef Hofmann, before auditioning for Rachmaninov. Prior to World War II, he had made his name in the US but from 1945 he extensively toured Europe and settled in London in 1961. The last of the great Romantic tradition of pianists, Cherkassky was described by Bryce Morrison as a 'mercurial genius', a unique personality, blessed with an incredible technique, who delighted in defying convention as no performance was identical. For a musician reluctant to visit the studio, live performances were the showcase for his stunning virtuosity and creativity caught on the wing.
  • Herbert von Karajan & Clara Haskil: Mozart

    The combination of Herbert von Karajan and the revered Romanian pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) was an ideal partnership. Karajan had an extraordinary rapport with her, describing her career as 'a long and often sorrowful march to glory' due to Haskil's well documented ill-health.
  • Chamber Orchestra of Europe: Schubert The Symphonies

    MP3 Album:
    Chamber Orchestra of Europe & Nikolaus Harnoncourt
  • Great Soloists from the Richard Itter Archive

    MP3 Album:
    These four discs document an amazing array of concerto soloists, caught at various stages of their careers in the four years 1953-56. Among them are several with claims to be the finest exponents of their particular concertos - notably David Oistrakh playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in a broadcast from the BBC Studios in 1954, and Dennis Brain in two Mozart Horn Concertos from 1953 & 1954 respectively along with Strauss’s Horn Concerto No.1, from 1956.
  • Sir Thomas Beecham (Richard Itter Collection Vol.2)

    MP3 Album:
    Live BBC recordings from the 1950s with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra.
  • Carlo Maria Giulini: Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro (Richard Itter Collection)

    MP3 Album:
    Carlo Maria Giulinis celebrated studio recording of Le nozze di Figaro was recorded in September 1959 following a live performance at the Royal Festival Hall a few days earlier. Nearly 18 months later on 6th February 1961 there was another RFH performance but with a substantially different cast from that on disc. Only two roles the Countess (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf) and Antonio (Piero Cappuccilli) were sung by the same artists.
  • Robert Casadesus (Richard Itter Collection)

    MP3 Album:
    Robert Casadesus (1899-1972) was a renowned 20th-century French pianist and composer who knew and worked with Ravel. He was especially known for his celebrated performances of the Mozart Concertos accompanied on record by George Szell – Gramophone called it ‘exquisite Mozart playing’, as well as his recordings of Ravel, Fauré and Debussy. He recorded Beethoven’s First, Fourth and Fifth Concertos, the latter two multiple times, though these were all made in the studio. He also extensively recorded the Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Zino Francescatti, who also appears in ICA Classics’ Pierre Monteux set.
  • Yehudi Menuhin: Mozart Violin Concertos (Richard Itter Collection)

    MP3 Album:
    This is the first time that these ‘live’ performances have been released and they are therefore of enormous interest to collectors and completists of this great violinist.
  • Otto Klemperer (Richard Itter Collection Vol.2)

    MP3 Album:
    This release has been sourced from the Richard Itter archive of ‘live’ recordings. The collection is very important for collectors because it has never been released before onto the market. Following the archive’s launch in October 2017 with releases featuring Beecham, Böhm, Cantelli, Karajan, du Pré, Klemperer and Rostropovich, it has received universal praise from both the classical media and record collectors for the excellent sound and performances.
  • Bruno Walter (Richard Itter Collection)

    MP3 Album:
    Bruno Walter’s (1876-1962) appearance in 1955 with the BBCSO formed part of the BBC’s May Festival, an annual event which looked back to the pre-war London Music Festival. The present recordings have never been previously issued and serve to illustrate his genius - he showed no diminution of his powers on the podium despite celebrating his 80th birthday the following year.
  • Pierre Monteux (Richard Itter Collection)

    MP3 Album:
    The great French conductor Pierre Monteux  (1875-1964) was naturally considered a specialist of his native country’s music, though he would never allow this to restrict him. This new set of previously unpublished recordings seeks to set the record straight, with a strong representation of German repertoire, notably Brahms’ Symphony No.3 with the Boston Symphony, which he never recorded commercially, in a rare ‘live’ performance from the 1956 Edinburgh Festival. More Brahms featuring two celebrated virtuosos – the Violin Concerto with the French violinist Zino Francescatti, and the Double Concerto where he is joined by his compatriot Pierre Fournier, both ‘live’ recordings from the Royal Festival Hall in 1955. Both are previously unpublished.
  • Jacqueline du Pré & Mstislav Rostropovich: Schumann & Dvořák Cello Concertos (Richard Itter Collection)

    MP3 Album:
    This previously unreleased live recording of Jacqueline du Pré playing the Schumann Cello Concerto is her first public performance of the work, given in the Royal Festival Hall on 12 December 1962 with Jean Martinon conducting the BBCSO. She had worked intensively on the concerto with Paul Tortelier in Paris prior to this concert. When Du Pré studied the Schumann with Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1966, he exclaimed, ‘This is the most perfect Schumann I have ever heard’. The 1962 live performance of the Dvořák Cello Concerto by Rostropovich has also not been released before. He is partnered by Carlo Maria Giulini, who went on to to make a studio recording of the same concerto with him in 1977. The Times critic described this Edinburgh Festival performance as an ‘exciting’ and ‘emotionally supercharged interpretation’ with Giulini’s reading ‘full of finely wrought points of detail’. The attractive bonus features Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya in the Ária from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras.