Johannes Brahms

Dame Felicity Lott, revered British soprano, says of this CD:

“ Summertime also has many of my favourite songs in English, French and German. We made the CD at a friend`s house, and the sessions were so relaxed, with no London traffic to cause endless retakes! It`s a real mix of beautiful songs of all kinds, on a summer theme. I chose songs I loved, from Gershwin to Christopher Robin….

Three centuries of song are represented here, and, as BBC Music Magazine's Hilary Finch put it “such is the skill of Johnson's programming that the entire recital seems to be a single, sustained exhalation of rapture and reflection”

She went on to say:

The upper reaches of Lott's still gleaming soprano inhabit Barber's 'Shining Night' and Fauré's Clair de lune'. And her robust English version of Schubert's 'Who is Sylvia?' finds an irresistible companion in Arne's 'Where the Bee Sucks', with its veritable midsummer night's dream of an accompaniment from Johnson. The artists' palpable sense of joy and well-being gathers momentum as they visit Berlioz's 'L'île inconnue' and as they sing on the water with Schubert. . . . And Lott and Johnson know well that the only way to face sentiment is to acknowledge its own integrity, as they do when they listen to Haydn Wood's 'Little Brown Bird' and eavesdrop with Fraser-Simson on Christopher Robin saying his prayers.

This CD features songs from a great variety of composers - Gershwin, Barber, Cole Porter, Bernstein, Brahms, Schubert, Arne, Schumann, Berlioz, and many more. A full 29 tracks of summer-themed songs!

This is the second installment of Géza Anda’s recordings from the archives of the SWR. His early reputation was built upon his unrivaled mastery of the great Romantic repertoire. His infallible sense of form, and understanding of the inner workings of the music and his brilliant, unsentimental performing style have influenced subsequent generations of pianists. These are recordings from 1950, 1951 & 1955.

Iconic pianist Radu Lupu has been an exclusive DECCA artist for 40 years. This all-new collection brings together for the first time all of his published solo recordings for DECCA as an integral set. It features those composers with which Lupu's name has been so closely linked throughout his career and for which he has achieved worldwide acclaim: Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann.

A special bonus is the inclusion of Radu Lupu's first concerto recording - Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto - made in 1970 with the London Symphony under the direction of Lawrence Foster. It was this concerto that Lupu had played to massive acclaim when he won the 1969 Leeds Piano Competition.

2010 marks the 40th anniversary of Lupu's association with Decca and in November he celebrates his 65th birthday.

Although he has publicly expressed his dislike of the recording process and has not agreed to make any recordings in recent years, Radu Lupu continues to give recitals and perform concertos in important venues throughout the world and many of his recordings have achieved reference status.

World-renowned pianist Hélène Grimaud plays two Brahms Sonatas (2 and 3) as well as the Intermezzi from Op.118

Another release on ONYX from “Britain’s premier chamber ensemble” (The Times) completing the piano quartet recordings. Nos 1&3 were released to critical acclaim on ONYX4029.

Alice Coote studied at the Guildhall, RNCM and the National Opera Studio and was awarded the Brigitte Fassbaender Award for Lieder Interpretation and the Decca Kathleen Ferrier Prize. A prolific lieder recitalist, she works regularly with the pianist Julius Drake and also enjoys a flourishing career on the international opera stage.

Celibadache demanded very high standards and rehearsed in great detail. He liked broad tempi, and the works of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Tchaikovsky were his core repertory. The recordings date from 1958-1959 and the sound is superb.

Brahms demonstrates his love of Hungarian music in these songs. Underlying all of them is the passionate or melancholic character of the Csárdás, the dance in 2/4 time that first gained popularity in the ballrooms of elegant Hungarian society in the 1830s. The theme that runs through the Mendelssohn songs is the entrancing experience of nature.