Johannes Brahms

Jacqueline du Pré brought such searing intensity and radiant joy to her cello playing that her impact endures, despite a career that was radically and tragically curtailed by illness before she turned 30.

She was born in Oxford on 26 January 1945 into a middle-class family in which music was important: her mother was a fine pianist and a gifted teacher. Just before her fifth birthday, when she was already showing musical promise, she heard the sound of a cello on the radio and the course of her life was set. She studied at Herbert Walenn’s London Violoncello School and at ten became a pupil of William Pleeth, who had himself studied with Julius Klengel. In 1956 she was awarded the Suggia Gift; in 1959 she gave her first public performance of the Elgar Concerto; in 1960 she won the Queen’s Prize and in 1961 she made a successful London recital début. She studied briefly with Casals in Switzerland, Tortelier in Paris and Rostropovich in Moscow and gradually consolidated her reputation at home. She began recording for EMI in 1962 and by 1965, when her famous disc of the Elgar Concerto was made, she was a star. That year she made her American début and in 1967 she married the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.

In July 1971, when she should have been at her peak, she began suffering seriously from a mysterious ailment which had already intermittently affected her playing. Eventually multiple sclerosis was diagnosed and, after a cruel series of remissions and relapses typical of that illness, in 1973 she retired. Gradually her health deteriorated, and she died in London on 19 October 1987.

This new album recollects and celebrates some of the choral music heard on royal occasions during the lifetime of HM Elizabeth II. The music chosen reflects the personal choices and commission by the Royal Family for weddings, funerals, and anniversaries.

Featuring John Rutter’s celebratory royal wedding anthem This is the day, written for the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey in 2011. Newly orchestrated exclusively for this recording, it reminds us of the event that captivated the attention of the nation last year. The CD also includes a new arrangement for unaccompanied choir of the Londonderry Air to the text I would be true, and an orchestration of Schubert’s beautiful Psalm 23 - The Lord is my Shepherd by John Rutter for this recording.

Heifetz’s series of arrangements and transcriptions for violin and piano reveal just how tasteful and refined a musician he was. Crafted with precision, and played with passion, they are alive with his stylistic awareness. Whether in his Rachmaninov transcriptions or in Robert Russell Bennett’s A Song Sonata, Heifetz lavished equal care on these gems and they enriched his concert programmes. They also proved hugely popular on disc – thirteen pieces come from a 1960 LP famously called ‘Heifetz’ – and their variety, virtuosity and sheer beauty remain imperishable examples of the art of the violin.

Mark Obert-Thorn, reissue producer and audio restoration engineer

Two great milestones in the discography of Frank Peter Zimmermann, one of the finest of German violin virtuosi. Graceful elegance marks his Mozart interpretations, while his Brahms is all virtuoso fire and dreamy, Romantic rapture.

In Anne-Sophie Mutter's recordings, the Brahms violin sonatas open a window on to the soul of the great Romantic composer. Melancholy, dramatic or serene and happy: in all the emotional nuances of these scores, the virtuoso violinist finds an ideal chamber music partner in Alexis Weissenberg.

DVD & bonus CD

Marking the centenary of Kathleen Ferrier's birth, Diane Perelsztejn's specially-extended feature-length film traces the remarkable life - and tragically brief career - of one of the greatest singers of all time. Drawing on recently-discovered material, and supported by a companion CD featuring unreleased live recordings from new York, the film is both a stirring portrait of an extraordinary woman and a tribute to a glorious voice that enthralled the world.

84 CDs + 1 DVD

Arturo Toscanini was the most celebrated conductor of his time, considered by many to be the greatest conductor of the twentieth century. He revolutionized musical interpretation by frequently insisting that his orchestras play the music exactly as written, a highly unusual practice in the nineteenth century, when Toscanini began his career. He conducted the world premieres of such operas as Puccini's "La Boheme" and "Turandot", and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci".

This set offers a reissue of RCA’s 1992 compendium that encompassed all the recordings that Toscanini made with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and NBC Symphony Orchestra. It also features 2 CDs of previously unreleased recordings with the BBC Symphony from the 1930s that were not included in the 1992 edition. From the Maestro’s acoustic recordings of 1920-21 with La Scala orchestra to his 1954 retirement, this collection spans all the years in which Toscanini’s career veered away from the opera house as it moved (after his 1937 Salzburg Festival appearances) exclusively to the concert hall.

As with his NBC broadcasts and recordings, these BBC and Philadelphia accounts disprove the specious notion that Toscanini’s interpretation was always the same from one performance of a given work to the next. The BBC recordings have special value for occurring in Queen’s Hall, acoustically London’s finest concert venue, which was sadly destroyed in World War II bombings. Particularly interesting are three NBC performances of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, two from broadcasts (October 28, 1939 and December 6, 1953, the third from a 1949 Carnegie Hall recording session). As heard in a 78-rpm RCA set, the 1939 performance was a sonic disaster in its dry, cramped, dynamically limited acoustic. As experienced here in a transfer made from NBC reference discs, it suggests a clean, vivid LP from the mid 1950’s. With each performance being somewhat different from the other, they serve as a reminder of how Toscanini was invariably rethinking his approach to a particular work.

The complete recordings made for RCA by Arturo Toscanini reissued in a beautiful new 84 CD + DVD box set, with extra previously unissued bonus materials added.

All recordings appear in latest re-mastered versions.

Includes 2 CDs of newly released recordings, originally made for HMV with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Hardcover book with liner notes by Toscanini biographers Mortimer F. Frank and Michael Stegemann and complete RCA discography.

Bonus DVD “The Maestro”.

84 CDs + 1 DVD in double walled cardboard sleeves in lift off cap box, hardcover book with 2 essays & RCA discography.

Issued to mark the centenary of Kathleen Ferrier’s birth, this 3CD set brings together for the first time all the EMI recordings by this great contralto, including two previously unissued tracks. In addition the booklet features three EMI publicity photos rarely seen since she first signed a contract with HMV/Colombia in 1944

Kathleen Ferrier (22 April 1912–8 October 1953) remains one of the best-loved British singers of our time. The eminent vocal expert Alan Blyth wrote of her in 1998: ‘Kathleen Ferrier, a legend in her own lifetime, has certainly become one since her untimely death in 1953. Her professional life, lasting little more than a decade, saw her rise from the obscurity of appearing with choirs in the north of England to the eminence of an international career in the company of such conductors as Barbirolli, Walter and Klemperer. It was an extraordinary transformation in every respect, but one wholly justified by the dignity and conviction of her singing and the commitment of her interpretations.’

CD1 begins with four test recordings of pieces by Gluck, Brahms and Elgar recorded by producer Walter Legge in June 1944 but not issued until 1978. Ferrier signed a one-year contract with EMI in September 1944 and her first commercial release was the two arias by the Baroque composer Maurice Greene that follow. Then come two Handel solos and five duets with soprano Isobel Baillie of compositions by Purcell and Mendelssohn. These completed Ferrier’s EMI contract and she then moved to Decca.

In 1949 Ferrier came back to EMI to record Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder in London with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter, the great Mahlerian who had introduced Ferrier to this work, which closes CD1

CD2 begins with four items recorded at a rehearsal in June 1950 for a concert of the Bach Mass in B Minor in Vienna with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karajan. EMI was setting up its recording equipment in the Musikvereinssaal for another project while the rehearsal was taking place and the engineer, as a test, turned on the tape machine to capture, almost complete, these four precious Ferrier tracks, which include two solos and two duets with the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Then comes a complete performance of Ferrier’s signature operatic role, that of Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck. This live recording dates from a radio broadcast in July 1951 in Amsterdam.

CD3 concludes with two bonus tracks; these are reserve takes of the first and the fifth movements of Kindertotenlieder being issued here for the first time. This work was originally recorded on 12-inch waxes, with a tape machine running as safety back-up, as was EMI’s practice in 1949. Masters from the waxes were used for most of the original 78-rpm sides, but for the release of the work on CD, the back-up tapes were used, and these reserve ‘takes’ have also survived.

This CD follows the very successful release of Brahms’ Symphony No.1 by Simone Young and the Philharmoniker Hamburg; “Powerful Brahms from Hamburg.” Gramophone. This performance was recorded in the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg in 2010.