Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

1 SACD with bonus CD 'Ein Leben in Tönen' (speaker: Harald Schmidt).

NB The spoken word CD is ONLY in German.

Ivry Gitlis was born in Haifa, Israel in 1922. He gave his first recital when he was just nine years old, and was heard by the great Bronislav Huberman, who recommended that he go to Paris to study at the National Conservatory. He won the Premiere Prix at the age of 13, and went on to study with George Enescu, Jacques Thibaud and Carl Flesch. During the Second World War he moved to London, where he was assigned to the British Army artist branch, giving many concerts for Allied troops.

Gitlis has always been a difficult violinist to categorise – maverick, with an unwillingness to conform, he has cultivated a unique style, and is at home in Wieniawski as he is in Xenakis, on prime time TV shows and in the great recital rooms of the world. He is a devoted champion of new music and has premiered works by Maderna and Xenakis. He is also proud of his appearance on The Rolling Stones album ‘Rock and Roll Circus’. Vox made the recordings on this set in the late 1950s and the 60s. The Berg and Stravinsky concertos won a Grand Prix du Disque, and as well as being highly regarded by fellow musicians, were apparently a favourite of Marilyn Monroe.

‘It seems to me, though I should like to have longer to think about it, that Ivry Gitlis gives the finest performance of both the Bartok works above that I have ever heard’ Gramophone, Bartok, 1955

‘Ivry Gitlis is a technical master, and he brings to both the Bruch and Sibelius concertos an address that stands them in very good stead…The Sibelius relaxes less often; and indeed Gitlis's attack on it is pursued with an intensity and ferocity that are substantially rewarding in their own right’ Gramophone 1956

World Première Recordings of Carl Davidoff’s third and fourth Cello Concertos.

Also included is Tchaikovsky’s complete oeuvre for Cello and Orchestra.

"The Slavonic works presented here include original works for trumpet, written by composers who are not well known to the general public, and also arrangements of popular works, ones that everyone must have heard at some time or another. The latter include Vocalise by Rachmaninov, Valse Sentimentale and the last movement, Mélodie, from Souvenir d’un lieu cher by Tchaikovsky, and the famous Flight of the Bumblebee, an orchestral interlude written by Nikolay Rimsky- Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan. This recording represents an important new step for me; I hope it will give the listener as much pleasure as it gave me. “ Romain Leleu

Mirella Freni, who celebrated her 75th birthday a few weeks ago, is one of the exceptional singers who have emerged from Italy, the home of opera. And unlike those other 'exceptional' talents who crop up every few years (and who often disappear just as quickly), Mirella Freni’s standing is heightened by the exceptional length of her career, which was so rich in peaks and free of troughs. That success finds confirmation in this selection of archive recordings chosen from more than the three decades Mirella Freni sang at the Vienna State Opera.

She began with a sensational debut as Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème. Within the space of six months, her Mimì had won the public’s heart at both La Scala, Milan and in Vienna, both under Herbert von Karajan. Her Rodolfo at the time was Gianni Raimondi, though the Viennese archives also document her longstanding partnerships with Luciano Pavarotti (Carlos Kleiber) and Plácido Domingo.

It was with Domingo (under the baton of James Levine) that Mirella Freni repeated her Salzburg Festival success, in Vienna, as Desdemona. As with her Mimì, her Elisabetta in Don Carlo under Claudio Abbado in 1989 was astonishing, for her voice had lost none of its freshness in the ten years since singing the role under Karajan.

In that same decade, she was also able to portray, convincingly, the youthful roles of Amelia in Simon Boccanegra and Manon Lescaut. Once again at Pavarotti’s side, this time for a Verdi concert in 1990, her public was inspired by excerpts from Aïda – unusual reprertoire for her.

She also proved with two Tchaikovsky roles that she was a diva in more than her mother tongue alone. Neither her Tatyana in Eugene Onegin nor her Lisa in Pique Dame (both with Seiji Ozawa at the helm) can be left out of this 'Vienna' portrait of her, as with her last role at the Vienna State Opera: her assumption of the title role in Giordano’s Fedora brought back this operatic rarity to a renewed appreciation.

This collection features some of the greatest composers ever to record, along with disciples playing pieces by their masters.

The disciples fall largely into two main ‘schools’: the Chopin/Schumann axis and the Liszt/Leschetizky group, offering piquant contrast in the piano styles that survived in the playing of Artur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz, respectively.

The recordings were selected for performance quality as well as historical and sonic considerations.

Audio conservation: Ward Marston