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Offenbach’s La Périchole (1868) will never cease to delights music lovers of all persuasions. Marc Minkowski – long one of the composer’s prophets – was keen to pay tribute to him with this world premiere recording on period instruments, in the company of the young school of French singers, including the bewitching Aude Extrémo, the dashing Stanislas de Barbeyrac and the hilarious Alexandre Duhamel. Combining fashionable rhythms with the most unexpected touches of folklore, the score is a veritable flood of hit numbers. How can one not be swept away by the insolence of the Seguidilla, the frenzy of the Bolero or the furious rhythm of the Prison Trio? Never before, perhaps, had Offenbach gone so far in caricaturing political leaders – nor used drunkenness to resolve the imbroglio of inextricable sentimental relationships. And indeed, the ‘Tipsy Arietta’ is one of the composer's best-known numbers. Cheers!

Jacqueline Du Pre - The Complete Warner Recordings [23CDs Box Set] (2022)
MP3 320 Kbps | Run Time: 22:00:42 | 2.95 Gb
Genre: Classical | Label: Warner Classics

Jacqueline du Pré was recognized during her brief prime as one of the supreme cellists of the 20th century, with an intense commitment and a well-honed technical mastery to back up her heaven-sent talents. She seemed to inhabit every piece she played and the public responded joyfully to her interpretations of such concertos as the Elgar and the Schumann, as well as the sonatas of Beethoven, Brahms, Franck et al. She was also at the centre of an extraordinary group of young friends who set the classical musical agenda for the 1960s. The way her career was snatched away from her by a remorseless illness, leading to her early death, has inevitably cast a romantic glow over her life story. So it is salutary to visit or revisit this treasury of her recordings - almost all of them painstakingly remastered from the original tapes, and including previously unissued performances - and remind ourselves just how great she was.