Heavyweight highlights from the last couple of months include two eightieth-birthday tributes to Itzhak Perlman, Sir Simon Rattle's recordings of British repertoire, remastered anthologies of mono recordings by Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Thomas Beecham, and a memorial to the Belgian coloratura soprano Jodie Devos (who died last year aged just 35).
Simon Rattle: British Composers
Berliner Philharmoniker, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle
Highlights from this British music collection include Elgar's Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius (with John Mitchinson, Janet Baker and John Shirley-Quirk), Britten's War Requiem (with Elisabeth Söderström, Robert Tear and Thomas Allen), Walton's Symphony No. 1, Cello Concerto and Belshazzar's Feast, Holst's The Planets (complete with Colin Matthews's 'Pluto'), and works by Nicholas Maw, Oliver Knussen, Thomas Adès and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
Available Format: 14 CDs
Sir Adrian Boult: The Warner Classics Edition
The Mono Recordings 1920-1957 on HMV, Pye Nixa & Parlophone
This first instalment of Warner Classics's Boult Edition brings together all of the (mono) recordings which he made for HMV, Pye Nixa and Parlophone between 1920 and 1957; remastered in HD from the original sources, more than half of the recordings make their first appearance on CD here, and the set also includes material which has never been previously released in any format. A second box devoted to Boult's stereo recordings (weighing in at roughly 100 discs) will be released in early 2026.
Available Format: 36 CDs
Released to celebrate the Israeli-American violinist's 80th birthday and accompanied by rare archive photos and a personal note from Perlman himself, this collection brings together the twenty-five albums which he recorded for Deutsche Grammophon and Decca between 1968 and 2001 - including the complete Beethoven violin sonatas with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mozart sonatas with Daniel Barenboim, a Bach album with Kathleen Battle, and the Elgar, Berg, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky concertos.
Available Formats: 25 CDs, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Spanning more than four decades, this mammoth collection of Perlman's recordings for EMI Classics, Teldec, Erato and Warner Classics was praised by Classic Review as 'an unusually complete view of one of the defining violinists of the late twentieth century': as well as most of his core concerto and chamber music repertoire, the set includes relatively rare concertos by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Goldmark and Ben-Haim, jazz and klezmer albums, and a recital of Schumann, Brahms and Bach with Martha Argerich which was absent from the seventieth-birthday edition in 2015.
Available Format: 78 CDs
Born in Krommenie in 1924, Aafje Heynis emerged as one of the most important Dutch singers of the post-War period after making a stellar debut with the Concertgebouw and Eduard van Beinum in Brahms's Alto Rhapsody. A live recording of that performance is included here, alongside the Vier ernste Gesänge, Bach's Vergnügte Ruh, Christian Ritter's cantata O amantissime sponse Jesu, a selection of Handel arias, extracts from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (her sole opera recording), and Bernard Haitink's first recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.
Available Format: 14 CDs
This collection of vintage Mozart interpretations centres on recordings which were made to commemorate the composer's bicentenary in 1956, including Deutsche Grammophon's 6-LP 'Jubilee Edition' (featuring Ferenc Fricsay, Clara Haskil and Igor Markevitch), Archiv's recordings of the ribald vocal canons (which were comparatively unknown at the time), Lieder from soprano Margot Guilleaume and fortepianist Fritz Neumeyer, and a live recording of the Requiem which was made under Eugen Jochum at the Stephansdom on the anniversary of Mozart's death in 1955.
Available Format: 14 CDs
Coming this Friday...
This 53-CD set is issued as a companion to to Warner Classics’s box of all Beecham's EMI stereo discs, and a significant amount of the material appears on CD for the first time; two-thirds of the tracks were newly remastered in HD for this edition, and many others have also been improved from previous remasterings in order to remove background-noise and smooth transitions. The repertoire includes most of Delius's major orchestral works, complete recordings of Die Zauberflöte, Tristan und Isolde, Faust and La bohème, and a substantial selection of Haydn and Mozart symphonies.
Available Format: 53 CDs
The Belgian coloratura soprano was just thirty-five when she died suddenly last June; all profits from sales of this set will be donated to the Jodie Devos Fund, established in her memory by friends and family 'to perpetuate [her] vision by democratizing operatic art for diverse audiences and supporting young talents in their artistic journey.' The anthology brings together all of her recordings for Alpha Classics, including the solo albums Offenbach: Colorature, And Love Said... and Bijoux Perdus, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater and two discs of chamber music with voice, plus a live recording from the Gaume Jazz Festival in 2017.
Available Format: 7 CDs
Recorded between 1969 and 1972, Doráti's set of the complete Haydn symphonies with Philharmonia Hungarica is still widely regarded as a benchmark, and is presented here in new 24-bit/192kHz transfers from the original master tapes (with a 5000-word essay by Decca's label director Dominic Fyfe). The anthology also includes The Creation, The Seasons, and the lesser-known earlier oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia, plus the 24 Minuets.
Available Format: 41 CDs
