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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 This new set of previously unpublished recordings seeks to set the record straight, with a strong representation of German repertoire, notably Brahms’ Symphony No.3 with the Boston Symphony, which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 Both are previously unpublished.
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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.
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Sir Thomas Beecham (Richard Itter Collection Vol.1)
MP3 Album:
Sir Thomas Beecham caught ‘live’ often showed the mercurial side of his character, and no performance was the same either in the studio or in the concert hall. ‘What Beecham sought at all times was freshness, and his unpredictability was a way to achieve this’ (David Patmore). All the performances included here from the Edinburgh Festival, London’s Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall and the BBC Studios are from Beecham’s final years, from 1954 when he had fully established the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and himself as central figures in England’s musical life, to 1959 when he conducted an extraordinarily memorable account of Brahms’s Symphony No.2. Every broadcast is captured here in exemplary sound for the time, and apart from the Liszt and Haydn Symphony No.101, none of the performances in this set have appeared on CD before, which makes it extremely important for all collectors of the conductor.
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Karl Böhm: Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (Richard Itter Collection)
MP3 Album:
Walter Berry reflected in an interview in 1985, 'we played in the Theater an der Wien (during the rebuilding of the Vienna State Opera) and we developed a certain style, a Mozart style which was connected very much to the singers of that time ... this was an incredible ensemble'. Harold Rosenthal, Editor of Opera magazine, described the staged performance at London's Royal Festival Hall on 13 September 1954 as 'a sheer delight', highlighting the performances of Erich Kunz (Figaro) and Sena Jurinac (Cherubino), while Irmgard Seefried (Susanna) was 'one of the joys of this recording' (George Hall). These Richard Itter tapes of the live broadcast have never been released before, and the superb recording fully captures the atmosphere in this light-footed performance in a packed Royal Festival Hall to perfection.
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Legend of Butterfly Lovers
MP3 Album:
Susanne Hou’s father Bo Zhi (Alexander) Hou was the top violinist at the Shanghai Conservatory at the time this concerto was written, going on to lead major orchestras in China before and during the Cultural Revolution. Mr Hou was asked to make the world premiere recording of The Butterfly Lover’s Concerto but, due to sensitive political and societal circumstances, he ultimately left the country without having had the opportunity to make the recording. He therefore now passes the torch of his legacy in China, and his unfulfilled destiny of recording The Butterfly Lovers Concerto, to his daughter Susanne Hou.
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Otto Klemperer (Richard Itter Collection Vol.1)
MP3 Album:
Despite there being a large number of Otto Klemperer recordings on the market, these Richard Itter tapes of live broadcasts from the Royal Festival Hall and the BBCs Studios in Maida Vale between 1955 and 1956 have never, as far as is known, been released before. Klemperer was always more exciting when caught live and had added urgency as compared to his studio accounts, particuarly at this time before his health deteriorated in later years. His Philharmonia concerts were hugely successful in the mid 1950s when Walter Legge was looking to replace Herbert von Karajan, who was in the process of leaving for the Berlin Philharmonic. As Richard Osborne states in his notes, The winter of 1955-56 marked a new dawn for Klemperer.
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Vladimir Jurowski: Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty
MP3 Album:
Jurowski's interpretation is based on his view that Acts 1 & 2 inhabit a Romantic sound world and then between Act 2 & 3, the sound changes completely becoming drier with much sharper outlines. He has said that if it were not for Tchaikovsky's untimely death, he would have developed a similar style of composition to Stravinsky between 1917 and 1928, around the time of Pulcinella. The Sleeping Beauty recorded here is performed complete. This release includes notes by David Nice and an interview with Jurowski about his interpretation.
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Guido Cantelli (Richard Itter Collection)
MP3 Album:
Guido Cantellis live recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra are exceptionally rare because the BBC seldom broadcast any of his concerts. ICA Classics released Cantellis live concert from the Edinburgh Festival in September 1954 on ICAC 5081 but there has been nothing else. Toscanini was Cantellis mentor and there is no doubt that he would have continued in the great conductors footsteps had he not been tragically killed in an air accident in Paris on the 24th November 1956. He was 36 years old. The Royal Albert Hall recording made by Richard Itter in May 1953 is very well recorded for the period and preserves the palpable excitement of the whole concert.
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Herbert von Karajan (Richard Itter Collection)
MP3 Album:
This release has been sourced from the Richard Itter archive. The collection is very important for collectors because it has never been released before onto the market. Herbert von Karajan’s association with the Philharmonia Orchestra started in 1948 and continued to 1960. Despite this long relationship, there are practically no live recordings from London’s Royal Festival Hall of Karajan and the Philharmonia caught on the wing.
