Nicolai Gedda

By the time he recorded the Requiem in the glowing acoustic of All Saints’, Tooting, the 28-eight-year-old Barenboim was already a seasoned Mozart conductor. He had completed an acclaimed series of the later symphonies, and was midway through the complete piano concertos, which he directed from the keyboard. All these recordings were with the ECO.

As Richard Wigmore’s informative note goes on to observe, ‘in those days big-band Mozart, à la Karajan and Böhm, was still the norm. Barenboim’s recordings of the symphonies uniquely combined a chamber scale with a subjective flexibility, founded on a deep analytical understanding of harmonic structure, that reflects his oft-expressed reverence for Wilhelm Furtwängler.

This 1971 Mozart Requiem is essentially in the same vein: expansive, pliable, lovingly moulded, ferociously dramatic in movements like the Dies irae and Confutatis, concerned everywhere to stress the music’s proleptic tendencies over its Baroque roots.’

Above all, the professional incisiveness of the 50-strong John Alldis Choir came as a revelation to many. As Alan Blyth put it in Gramophone, the choir, ‘wholly responsive to the extremes of dynamics required of them, is also capable of finely disciplined attack’. He noted, too, the ‘unrepeatably distinguished team of soloists’.

This 1969 New Philharmonia recording of Anton Bruckner’s massive C major Te Deum (originally coupled with Bach’s Magnificat) was Barenboim’s first foray into the music of a composer he would often conduct with distinction, not least in his 1970s symphony series with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Again, both works are newly transferred and remastered to ART standard at Abbey Road Studios.

This 2 CD set is one of four special albums being released by EMI Classics on 8 September 2008 to celebrate the 150th Anniversary on 22 December of the birth of Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

Puccini is one of today’s most popular operatic composers. His works dominate the programmes of the world’s leading opera houses, and his compositions are heard frequently on radio and television, in film soundtracks and in TV commercials.

Maria Callas is an iconic figure in the world of opera and she continues to be acclaimed as one of the greatest interpreters of the music of Puccini in living memory.

All of Puccini’s well known operas are represented, including Manon Lescaut, La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot and the less frequently performed Il trittico (Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi).

The programme covers all of Puccini’s main soprano arias as well as the principal love duets, in which Callas is joined by her regular partner on records Giuseppe di Stefano in several items as well as by Nicolai Gedda in Madama Butterfly and Eugenio Fernandi in Turandot.

When this recording of Peter Cornelius’s sparkling German comedy Der Barbier von Bagdad was released in 1957, The Gramophone reviewer remarked that “there is no mistaking the enjoyment which the cast find in the work – an enjoyment seemingly shared by the orchestra and the chorus… Outstanding in this company is Oskar Czerwenka, who very obviously relished the verbal humour in his part and gives a splendid comic performance… Nicolai Gedda is on his best form, and Schwarzkopf brings distinction to [her] part”.

The 1944 recording of Weber’s delightful one-act Singspiel Abu Hassan, based on The Arabian Nights, features Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Erich Witte as “a very melodious pair of lovers, Michael Bohnen revels in his buffo part, and Leopold Ludwig keeps the little opera moving briskly” The Gramophone, July 1961