Originally two separate albums recorded in the late days of stereo LPs, this two-disc set of Bach's works for harpsichord was released together for less than the price of a single LP. But even at twice the price of the original LPs, these performances would be worth purchasing for two reasons. First, the harpsichordist is Gustav Leonhardt, and while there are surely more virtuosic harpsichordists in the world, there are few finer musicians and fewer still finer souls.
To publish this complete edition of Giuseppe Tartini’s Violin Concertos is not only a source of pride for a record label like Dynamic, which in its 36 years of activity has built a considerable catalogue of violin music. This edition is an artistic and historical document of indisputable musicological importance for anyone wishing to have a philologically reliable testimony of this aspect of 18th-century Italian instrumental music, valuable, therefore, for more than the mere dimension of listening.
Richard Strauss’s (1864–1949) acceptance into the pantheon of great Lieder composers began in the early 1950s, perhaps marked by the enthusiastic reception of his Four Last Songs, premiered by Kirsten Flagstad eight months after Strauss’s death. It wasn’t long before these songs became widely performed, and by extension, his Lieder as a whole, began to gain greater acceptance as high art along with Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. This compilation concentrates on Strauss Lieder recordings from an earlier era that display the sort of vocal charm and straightforward approach to the music not usually heard in today’s style of Lieder singing. Many of these recordings are extremely important historic documents retaining their position as the definitive versions of Strauss Lieder. Some of the singers included here not only knew Strauss, but worked with him, and their recordings could have been heard and judged by him. This three CD-set contains forty songs in eighty-two performances by fifty-seven singers.