-
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.
-
Great Italian Operas
MP3 Album:
This set features two classic performances from the golden age of the Covent Garden Opera Company and a sparkling Falstaff from the Edinburgh Festival, combining masterworks of Italian opera by Puccini, Verdi and Rossini into one outstanding collection. Carefully remastered and restored, the recordings feature a stellar cast of Italian singers and conductors, including renowned soprano Renata Tebaldi, said by Toscanini to possess ‘the voice of an angel’.
-
Great Choral Classics
MP3 Album:
WILLIAM STEINBERG
BEETHOVEN Missa solemnis – 1973
ICAC 5054
IGOR MARKEVITCH
VERDI Messa da Requiem – 1960
ROSSINI Overtures – 1957
ICAC 5068 (2CD)
DIMITRI MITROPOULOS
BERLIOZ Requiem (Grande Messe des morts) – 1956
ICAC 5075
GENNADI ROZHDESTVENSKY
MAHLER Das klagende Lied – 1981
JANÁCEK The Fiddler’s Child – 1979
ICAC 5080
-
Dimitri Mitropoulos
MP3 Album:
Berlioz: Requiem
Nicolai Gedda
Chor des Norddeutschen Rundfunks
Kölner Rundfunkchor
Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester
-
Yuri Bashmet
MP3 Album:
Brahms: Symphony No.3
-
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.6 ‘Pathétique’
Novaya Rossiya State Symphony Orchestra
-
Renata Tebaldi
MP3 Album:
Puccini: Tosca
Ferruccio Tagliavini / Tito Gobbi / The Covent Garden Opera Chorus / The Covent Garden Orchestra / Francesco Molinari-Pradelli
-
Dimitri Mitropoulos
MP3 Album:
Mahler: Symphony No.3
-
Debussy: La Mer
Kolner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester / Lucretia West