An anecdote featuring actress Gina Lollobrigida (who died yesterday aged 95).
Told to me by John Georgiadis, one-time leader of the LSO. The orchestra had played Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade for Celibidache (RFH, c.1977, I was there) and John had been asked by Celi to portray the storyteller as the thirteen-year-old girl she is reported...
Many Happy Returns to my friend Peter. For him Karl Böhm’s 1971 DG recording of Mozart’s Requiem (K626), Peter’s first CD. From which, the ‘Recordare’.
Ravel’s Boléro: a serendipitous selection of fifteen performances from across the decades – from Franz André to Klaus Tennstedt (alphabetical) if arranged in a somewhat higgledy-piggledy order, and including recordings conducted by Ravel himself, Celibidache, Coppola, Martinon, Mravinsky and Felix Slatkin.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) This post prompted by Comments left on this review: RELEASED TODAY, January 28: John Wilson & Sinfonia of London record music by Maurice Ravel for Chandos. Why fifteen recordings? Because fifteen minutes is the average playing time of...
Start the New Year with a Champagne Galop, the one by Lumbye; Berliner Philharmoniker/Mariss Jansons (Waldbühne; undated); and then let the passing Hours Dance, Ponchielli-style, from his opera La Gioconda; Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy (recorded in 1964; CBS/Sony).
