Rimsky Korsakov: Le Coq d'Or (The Golden Cockerel)

Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky‐Korsakov showed musical promise as a child, but the pursuit of a Naval career meant that much of his grounding in musical theory was gained in between various tours of duty. Although best known in the Western world for his nationalist orchestral works, Rimsky‐ Korsakov brought Russian opera to the fore, so that by the end of his life, the genre was flourishing.

The Golden Cockerel, written between 15 October 1906 and 29 August 1907, was inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s tale and caused concern among the Russian authorities, with the story detailing the murder of a Tsar and providing a critique of the power associated with Tsarism. This predictably led to trouble with the censor, which demanded that the prologue, epilogue and fourteen lines of the libretto should be cut; Rimsky‐Korsakov refused and the work was permitted to only appear in print.

At the centre of the opera is the juxtaposition of two of the characters and their respective musical language: that of the rigid marches demonstrating the power of King Dodon and the delicate, ethereal chromaticism of the Queen of Shemaka, designed to sound other‐worldly. This recording includes the opera in full, containing none of the cuts demanded by the censor.

Of this 1985 recording by the Sofia National Opera, conducted by Dimiter Manolov, BBC Music Magazine wrote ‘the famous 19‐ minute coloratura show‐piece…is beautifully encompassed’. Elena Stoyanova sings this piece in the role of the Queen of Shemakha. The role of King Dodon is sung by Hungarian bass Nikolai Stoilov.

‘You Londoners want to know what an orchestra ought to be like? Well, just listen to this.’ Ernest Newman, Sunday Times, October 1932

Two of the most significant pioneering experiments in sound recording, stereophonic sound and recording on tape, involved the London Philharmonic Orchestra and its founder Sir Thomas Beecham. At Beecham’s famous mono recording session of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony in 1934, engineers experimented simultaneously with stereo sound and during a tour of Germany in 1936 part of one of the Orchestra’s concerts was recorded using the revolutionary invention of tape. The results of these landmark moments in the Orchestra’s history are restored here for the first time in full. Astonishingly when Beecham started conducting in the early 1900s, Mozart’s music was hardly known in the UK. With the single-mindedness for which he was renowned, the conductor set out to change this perspective, giving performances that bore out his claim that the two virtues necessary for a successful presentation of the music were ‘the maximum of virility, coupled with the maximum of delicacy’. Nowhere did he combine these two elements more effectively than in his approach to Mozart’s symphonies, where his bold, masculine phrasing, sense of line and fastidious attention to detail virtually created a new style.

Beecham was a lifelong champion of the music of Mozart, and his recordings of nine of Mozart’s symphonies between 1934 and 1940 with the LPO are still regarded as benchmark recordings to this day.

This is the first time that the results of Alan Blumlein’s experiments with stereophonic sound and the Orchestra have been heard in full.

Momentous pioneering developments are documented here in full for the very first time.

An opportunity for collectors given the significance of this development in recording technology.

A great addition to the catalogue to sit alongside The Founding Years: Sir Thomas Beecham (LPO0006)

Eugene Nesterenko leads an all Russian cast in this powerful performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale opera based on the short story by Alexander Pushkin. The opera was completed in 1907, and received its premiere in Moscow in 1909. For many years the opera was commonly performed in French under the still recognized title Le Coq d'Or. Nowadays, the opera is almost exclusively sung in Russian, as on this recording.

Recorded on 9th November 1971