Minkus: Don Quixote: Pas de deux

Recording producers: Ray Minshull (Verdi, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saëns, Rossini); John Culshaw (J. Strauss II, Weber, Minkus); Michael Williamson (Lecocq, Walton)

Recording engineer: Kenneth Wilkinson (Verdi, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saëns, Rossini, J. Strauss II, Weber, Minkus); Ken Cress (Lecocq, Walton)

Recording location: Kingsway Hall, London, UK, July 1953 (J. Strauss II, Minkus), November 1953 (Weber); Watford Town Hall, London, UK, September 1957 (Lecocq, Walton); La Maison de la Chimie, Paris, France, November 1958 (Verdi, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saëns, Rossini)

The music on this pair of CDs falls into one of two categories: ballet music from an opera, or ballet music that was not originally intended for dancing at all, but that was subsequently adapted for that purpose. (The exception is Don Quixote, a full-length ballet with an original score.)

Many famous conductors had unusual lives, but the life of Anatole Fistoulari (1907-1995) was more unusual than most. When he was just seven, he conducted a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony in his native city of Kiev. At thirteen, he conducted Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah in Bucharest. While a young man, he travelled throughout Europe and North America, accompanying bass Feodor Chaliapin and conducting the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Escaping the European mainland in World War II, he came to England, where he soon married Gustav Mahler’s sole surviving daughter, Anna, and was named principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He became a British citizen in 1948. Under a reciprocal arrangement between Decca and RCA, the Verdi, Mussorgsky, Saint-Saëns and Rossini items – all ‘opera-ballets’ – first appeared on RCA in 1960. Their first Decca release (under the title ‘The World of Ballet’) was not until 1972. Likewise, the Lecocq and Walton items were published in 1959 by RCA but in 1971 by Decca.

This collection, the third of a trilogy (the others being “A Night at the Opera” [DDA25067] and “The Piano at the Carnival” [DDA25076]) owes its inception to commission from pianophile and ex-ballet dancer Geoffrey Walters to make piano transcriptions of four pas de deux from Russian ballets. In classical ballet the pas de deux is typically a four-part set piece involving two principals, one male and one female; the first and last sections involve both partners, while the second and third are “variations” that demonstrate the skills of each dancer in turn. The brief was to recreate, in terms of the piano, the imperial grandeur of the golden age of Russian ballet; in attempting to do so Goldstone has aimed to retain the richness of texture of the orchestral originals, and there is an occasional short pianistic cadenza.

Described by The New York Times as “a man whose nature was designed with pianos in mind”, Anthony Goldstone is one of Britain’s most respected pianists. A sixth-generation pupil of Beethoven through his great teacher Maria Curcio, Anthony Goldstone was born in Liverpool. He studied with Derrick Wyndham at the Royal Manchester College of Music (which later honoured him with a Fellowship), later with Curcio in London.

He has enjoyed a career encompassing six continents, the Last Night of the Proms (after which Benjamin Britten wrote to him, “Thank you most sincerely for that brilliant performance of my Diversions. I wish I could have been at the Royal Albert Hall to join in the cheers”), very many broadcasts and nearly seventy CDs (including the BBC issue of his London Promenade Concert performance of Beethoven's fourth Piano Concerto). He has an adventurous approach to repertoire and has been praised by Vienna's Die Presse for “his astonishingly profound spiritual penetration”.

In the last few years Goldstone has become known for his acclaimed completions and realisations of works for solo piano and piano duet by Schubert, and for two pianos and solo piano by Mozart, all of which he has recorded on Divine Art CDs.

He is also one half of the acclaimed and brilliant piano duo Goldstone and Clemmow with his wife Caroline. The duo has made many CDs for Divine Art as well as other labels.