Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953)

The four coronations of the twentieth century were enormous and extravagant. Replete with festive pageantry, these ceremonies were joyful celebrations of British music, employing tremendous forces. Choirs from across London and beyond were marshalled to provide a chorus of over 400 voices; a full-size symphony orchestra was squeezed into Westminster Abbey, whilst bands of fanfare trumpeters led the pomp and celebration.

Recorded - Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna 27th May 1953. During the 1950's, Karl Böhm made a handful of orchestral recordings for Decca with the Wiener Philharmoniker of, music by, among others, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Weber. Reappearing here, for the first time on CD, internationally, are his swift recordings of Beethoven's Eighth and of two Schubert symphonies (Nos. 5 and 8). Never imposing his will too strongly on his Viennese orchestra - and they had these classics in their blood - he directs performances that are fresh and gives full rein to the Vienna Philharmonic's wonderful tonal resources. Add the acoustic of the Grosser Saal at the Musikverein, familiar as daily bread to all the participants, and you have the best kind of tradition.

The four coronations of the twentieth century were enormous and extravagant. Replete with festive pageantry, these ceremonies were joyful celebrations of British music, employing tremendous forces. Choirs from across London and beyond were marshalled to provide a chorus of over 400 voices; a full-size symphony orchestra was squeezed into Westminster Abbey, whilst bands of fanfare trumpeters led the pomp and celebration.

Gulda, a brilliant master of rhythm, uncompromising Bach interpreter and jazz musician, is heard at his best when performing Chopin, whose works appear in Guldas earliest concert programmes. His secret in playing Chopin with so much vitality lay in the inimitable mix of rhythmic strictness, cantabile tenderness and controlled outbursts. Beethoven was an important composer for Gulda. The theme and variation form afforded both of them the opportunity to demonstrate their respective abilities and showcase their remarkable skills. And what better showcase than the Diabelli Variations? Although this fourth instalment of the SWR Gulda Edition includes only well-known compositions, Friedrich Gulda's extraordinary sense of sound, sophisticated touch and rhythmic vitality coax new facets out of these works so that we hear them from a fresh perspective.

She is a piano legend, he has collaborated as a soloist with all leading conductors and orchestras around the world. Now Martha Argerich and Guy Braunstein come to the Pierre Boulez Saal with their first-ever duo program—an artistic encounter that promises to be an extraordinary musical experience.

The Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches Belgium and the music of Joseph Jongen, a composer more celebrated for his organ music now, but who was equally admired in his day for his orchestral and chamber works. Jongen studied at the Liège Conservatoire where he heard the great violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and composer-conductors Vincent d’Indy and Richard Strauss.

"Delicado" (1953) presents love songs from South America, "Amour, Amor, Amore" (1955) presents love songs from the Continent, and together they prove that Percy Faith's music is romantic in any language!
Percy Faith was one of the most popular easy listening recording artists of the 1950s and '60s. Not only did he have a number of hit albums and singles under his own name, but Faith was responsible for arranging hits by Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and Burl Ives, among others, as the musical director for Columbia Records in the '50s.

It is all-but forgotten that before the arrival of those composers whom we now think of as quintessentially American (from Ives onwards) there was thriving group composing in the USA who had studied in Europe and transferred its traditions to their homeland. It is to this school that Huss and Schelling belong.

André Cardinal Destouches (1672-1749) was educated by the Jesuits and had a career as a Musketeer before resigning to study music with André Campra. His first ‘hit’ was the pastoral Issé in 1697, which was written for the court but immediately taken up by the Opéra in Paris. He rose to prominent positions in both contexts and Sémiramis was first performed in 1718. Influenced by the Italophile Campra, Destouches abandoned the traditional five-part string scoring of Lully and his followers and created a work that was perhaps too serious for its time: only now are we in a position to recognise his work as an important step along the road from the aesthetic of Lully to that of Rameau.