Tchaikovsky: Oh! Chante Encore!, Op.16 No.4

Elisabeth Söderström was a born storyteller. She told stories not just in music, but also peppered her recitals on stage with tales and anecdotes. It made her a perfect interpreter for the collection of children’s songs by Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and Gretchaninov she recorded with Vladimir Ashkenazy in 1977–78 which appear on CD2 of this set, the first (LP) issue greeted with enthusiasm by Gramophone reviewer W.S.M. with the words ‘the best record of song to appear in 1979’. It later went on to win the 1979 Gramophone’s Solo Vocal Award. But there was more: a selection of Tchaikovsky songs over two LPs; a substantial survey of the Rachmaninov songs (‘one of the gramophone’s crown jewels’ wrote John Steane in Gramophone) as well as the complete Sibelius songs.

Born in Stockholm on 7 May 1927 to a Russian mother and Swedish father, Söderström she was a talented recitalist, as much in demand in the concert hall as she was in the opera theatre. From 1991–96 she also directed the Drottingholm Festival Opera with much success. The two LPs of Tchaikovsky songs were issued in part by Decca on CD and this is their first complete release in this format. Overshadowed by his orchestral works, they are nonetheless absolute gems, with their piano parts of almost orchestral scope. Ashkenazy’s is, too, the disembodied voice that speaks a few of Pushkin’s lines in the early setting of Zemfira's song.

‘Söderström came to be known internationally in the late 1950s,’ wrote John Steane, ‘and over the next three decades, on until her retirement from singing in the early 1990s she never “blotted her copybook”. She neither sought nor won cheap success.’ Söderström passed away in Stockholm on 20 November 2009, aged 82, from complications from a stroke.

This release marks the launch of an Eloquence series of notable recitals of songs and opera arias by some of the great voices of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.

With this release, distinguished Russian violinist Sasha Rozhdestvensky and acclaimed Swiss pianist Josiane Marfurt offer the only available collection of P. I. Tchaikovsky’s music for violin and piano that can be considered truly “complete.”

The original score to the composer’s transcription of his early song for these instruments – Oh! Chante Encore, Op. 16, No. 4 – was long believed lost, until Rozhdestvensky discovered it recently at the National Library of France in Paris. This delightful and engaging work is offered here in its world premiere recording.

Rozhdestvensky’s playing is noted for its rare technical wizardry, gorgeous tone, and plenty of Russian “soul.” Emerging young pianist Marfurt is rapidly building a glowing reputation as both a top-tier soloist and chamber artist. As regular chamber partners, they form an ideal Tchaikovsky “team” – able to realize the composer’s distinctive melodic-harmonic beauty, lush sound and searing sentiment to perfection.

This is a specially priced 2CD portrait of the great German tenor, Peter Anders.

These recordings were made at the height of his career and have never been released before. Included are works by Wagner, Strauss, Beethoven, Schumann and Tchaikovsky.