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BBC Legends Vol.3
ICA Classics, via its long-term contract with BBC Worldwide, are proud to release a third volume of the best-selling BBC Legends box, featuring 20 CDs of some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Volume one was released in 2013 comprising 20 CDs taken from the critically acclaimed BBC Legends catalogue which has been unavailable since 2010. The second volume was released in 2017 and is now out of print.
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Annie Fischer: Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 19, 15 “Pastoral”, 30 & 32
"This glorious issue is a reminder of a unique pianist held in awe by artists of the stature of Sviatoslav Richter and Otto Klemperer." - International Piano
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Gennady Rozhdestvensky: Shostakovich
Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018) was one of Russia's greatest conductors along with Evgeny Mravinsky and Kirill Kondrashin. His close personal and musical relationship with Shostakovich began in the 1950s and continued until the composer's death in 1975. Rozhdestvensky said at the time, 'It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of my relations with Dmitri Shostakovich since he opened before me a musical universe like a gigantic magnifying glass reflecting our fragile world'. Rozhdestvensky conducted the first western premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No.4 in Edinburgh in 1962 and after many subsequent performances internationally, it was also the inaugural piece in his tenure as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1979-81). Composed in 1936 but condemned by the Soviet authorities, it did not receive it's first performance until 1961 in Moscow. The epic Symphony No.11, given a dramatic performance by the BBC Philharmonic in 1997, is based on revolutionary folksongs relating to the 1905 Russian Revolution, and received the Lenin Prize in 1958. Despite this, questions arose as to whether Shostakovich was denouncing the Soviet regime's brutal treatment of it's opponents in it, specifically the 1956 invasion of Hungary or the Tsarist tyranny and oppression of 1905, to which there are no conclusive answers.
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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.
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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.
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Chamber Orchestra of Europe: Schubert The Symphonies
MP3 Album:
Chamber Orchestra of Europe & Nikolaus Harnoncourt
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Moné Hattori: Waxman-Shostakovich
MP3 Album:
Born in Tokyo in 1999, Moné Hattori comes from a musical family. After studies in Japan with Aguri Suzuki, Yasuko Ohtani, and Akiko Tatsumi, she made her concerto debut aged eight, and enrolled in Zakhar Bron’s prestigious Academy in Interlaken, Switzerland. Her debut recording featuring Franz Waxman’s virtuoso showpiece Carmen-Fantasie is technically brilliant as well as being a rarity on record.
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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.
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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.