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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. -
The Dream of Gerontius
Filmed in colour from Canterbury Cathedral in 1968, this DVD represents the only existing film of Sir Adrian Boult conducting The Dream of Gerontius. Sir Adrian Boult championed Elgar’s music throughout his life, following the composer’s prophetic words in a letter to the conductor: ‘I feel that my reputation in the future is safe in your hands’. Featuring a stellar cast of soloists including Dame Janet Baker, this performance is redolent of Sir Adrian Boult’s ‘commendable energy and typical humanity’ (The Gramophone Guide review of Boult’s 1975 studio recording of The Dream of Gerontius). This DVD also features a 60-minute documentary on Sir Adrian Boult produced by the BBC in 1989 to celebrate the centenary of his birth. -
Claudio Arrau / Van Cliburn
CHOPIN
Ballade No.3 op.47 in A flat major
Scherzo No.3 in C sharp minor
Fantasy in F minor
Van Cliburn
BBC TELEVISION STUDIOS, 9 JUNE 1959
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BEETHOVEN
Sonata No.23 in F minor op.57 ‘Appassionata’
Claudio Arrau
BBC TELEVISION STUDIOS, 13 OCTOBER 1959 -
Mstislav Rostropovich / Benjamin Britten
Tchaikovsky
Rococo Variations
Pezzo capriccioso
Romeo and Juliet Overture
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Britten
Gloriana (extracts)
Peter Pears
The Aldeburgh Festival Singers
English Chamber Orchestra