Historical Recordings - up to 25% off

Just prior to the Second World War, Sir Adrian Boult (1889–1983) single-handedly built the BBC Symphony Orchestra into a world-renowned ensemble that attracted such artists as Arturo Toscanini, Serge Koussevitzky and Bruno Walter to conduct it. After retiring from the BBCSO in 1950, Boult became chief conductor of the London Philharmonic until 1957. He continued to guest conduct and record prolifically until 1978 and enjoyed an ‘Indian summer’ in the studio with both English music (Vaughan Williams and Elgar) and nineteenth-century German repertoire (Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert and Wagner). His early studies at the Leipzig Conservatory with Max Reger and with the charismatic conductor Arthur Nikisch, who knew Brahms, gave Boult a unique understanding of this composer.

Boult’s period in Leipzig also brought him in touch with the music of Mendelssohn, who had founded the Conservatory as well as being appointed as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

The live 1975 Proms performance of Brahms’s Symphony No.4 has never been issued before. The live account is more electrifying than the studio recording made in 1972. It has been recorded in stereo and fully captures the ‘Indian summer’ that Boult enjoyed at the Proms and in the studio with EMI at the time.

The Mendelssohn Symphony No.4 was recorded live in stereo and has never been issued before. It is a comparative rarity in that Boult’s only other recorded performances were in 1966 (unissued on CD) and in 1954 in mono.

Sir Adrian Boult (1889–1983), one of the great British conductors of the 20th century, who studied under the legendary Arthur Nikisch in Berlin which make his Brahms interpretations so special.

This fiery 1976 Prom stereo broadcast of Brahms 1 is the only authorised live account available. He recorded the symphony three times in the studio.

The live stereo broadcast of Elgar’s Enigma Variations was sourced from the Royal Albert Hall Centenary Concert on 29 March 1971 and features the alternative organ part played by George Thalben-Ball, one of the most celebrated organists of his time.

The CD is completed by an extract of an interview Boult gave on the occasion of his 85th birthday where he talks about the art of interpretation.

SAMPLE TRACK Brahms Symphony No.1 – 1st movement

These archive recordings are extremely rare and have never been issued before.

The live performances from London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1967 captures Gilels

at his best, playing in front of an audience away from the confines of the studio.

His earlier recordings were all made in the studio and date back to 1954 and 1957 (both no longer available) as well as a complete set with Szell in 1968 where the recorded sound came under some criticism.

William Mann in the Times wrote after the concert of Concerto No.3, “For all his truly Beethovenian brio in the first movement, Gilels never allowed this to get the better of the clarity and firmness of his phraseology, indeed his opening was like chiselled stone. There was immense dignity in the Largo and the Rondo, taken at what I thought to be exactly the right speed, came across with remarkable vivacity”. Every critic praised Boult’s accompaniments of both concertos.

Excellent stereo sound remastered by Paul Baily.

Recorded: Cheltenham Festival, 7 July 1972 (Vaughan Williams), Barking Town Hall, 26 November 1969 (Hadley, Bax), Maida Vale Studios, 12 December 1966 (Berg)

Sir Adrian Boult was Vaughan Williams's close friend and one of his greatest advocates.

The broadcast in excellent stereo from the 1972 Cheltenham Festival marks the composers 100th anniversary with wonderful performances of Symphony No.6 (Boult gave the first performance of this work in 1947) and the ever popular Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Boult recorded these works in the studio many times but these are live performances and the occasion is palpably felt.

There are two short fillers in stereo from Patrick Hadley (celebrating Vaughan Williams's 70th birthday) and Arnold Bax with his warmly atmospheric 'Mediterranean' both recorded in the studio in 1969.

As a substantial bonus and also as a 'must' for Boult collectors is a very rare broadcast made in 1966 in stereo of Berg's 'Lyric Suite'. Boult gave a pioneering performance of Berg's 'Wozzeck' in 1933 and therefore it is of particular interest to hear his interpretation of the three movement 'Lyric Suite', one of the composers most approachable works.

One of the great British conductors of the 20th century, Sir Adrian Boult studied under the legendary Arthur Nikisch in Berlin, which makes his Brahms interpretations so special.

Similarly his friendship with Sir Edward Elgar ensured that all his interpretations of the composer’s works were without question authoritative, achieving an iconic status.

The Proms recording of Brahms’s Symphony No.3 from 1977 is in superb stereo and represents Boult’s ‘golden years’. He recorded two cycles of Brahms symphonies in 1954 and in the 1970s but all in the studio, whereas this ICA recording catches him ‘live’ producing a sense of drama and passion. Martin Cotton comments in his booklet notes, ‘Perhaps most surprising is the final Allegro where there is an organic shape to the movement which doesn’t compare with the rather more staid LSO (studio) recording of seven years earlier.’ In his notes, Martin Cotton emphatically states that the 1976 ‘live’ recording in wonderful stereo of Elgar’s Symphony No.1 from the Proms, ‘is completely astonishing’. Boult, one of the last living conductors to have known Elgar, had effectively been blessed by him: ‘I feel that my reputation in the future is safe in your hands’ – and here he gives what is arguably his greatest performance of the work. Cotton attended the 1976 concert and describes it as ‘one of the greatest musical experiences of my life’.

Boult’s recent recording of Brahms’s Symphony No.1 coupled with Elgar’s Enigma Variations (ICAC5019) was acclaimed in International Record Review: ‘This is a very powerful reading, from the quite fast introduction of the first movement to the triumphal close. Much the same can be said of the Elgar “Enigma” Variations from the Royal Albert Hall Centenary Concert in 1971, again with the BBCSO. Boult keeps “Nimrod” flowing, but in the finale his speeds are more flexible – starting steadily, then pushing on. It all works extremely well.’

This CD represents stunning value at over 81 minutes long.

Not long after his February 1934 London Queen’s Hall concert comprising three Mozart concertos, Schnabel made his first recording of a Mozart piano concerto, No. 27 in B flat major, K.595, at the recently opened and well equipped Abbey Road Studios. Completed in one session, this recording is notable not only for the excellence of its sound but for the moulding of the slow movement, taken at a slow tempo, but without any loss of the tension between successive notes or of the coherence of harmonic progressions. Schnabel’s recording of the Concerto for two pianos, with his son Karl Ulrich, is made up entirely of first takes. In the Rondo in A minor, K.511, Schnabel beautifully shapes the phrases and avoids sentimentality or overt intensity of expression.

This release contains all of Schnabel’s commercial disc recordings of the works of J. S. Bach, a composer whose keyboard music the pianist felt was too intimate for performance in the concert hall. One of Schnabel’s greatest talents was the ability to employ not only seemingly natural tempos but, more importantly, the perfect tempo relationship between sections and movements. The Prelude and Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier was the last recording Schnabel made before his death in 1951.