Few people think of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Walton as composers of chamber music; nevertheless, the small number of works of this classification which they published is highly characteristic, personal and significant.

This set presents the NBC Symphony broadcast of February 14, 1953, together with a rehearsal, from two days earlier, of one of the selections to be broadcast. The concert is an important one for those of us who love Toscanini because it marks the last time her performed what were probably his three favorite Debussy pieces. Not only are these Toscanini's last performances of these three great works; they are also his best-sounding ones. For the NBC Symphony broadcasts had been moved, in January 1951, from the rather dead and dry Studio 8H in the RCA Building at New York's Rockefeller Center to the sonic warmth of Carnegie Hall.

written by William H. Youngren

"Liszt is a composer who has been closely associated with Mr. Wild throughout his long career. In New York City in 1961, he gave a monumental recital celebrating the 150th anniversary of Liszt's birth. In 1986, honoring the 100th year of Liszt's death, he gave three recitals entitled "Liszt The Poet", "Liszt The Transcriber" and "Liszt The Virtuoso", in NY's Carnegie Hall. Championing composers such as Liszt long before they were fashionable, is part of the foundation on which Mr. Wild has built his long and successful career."

Asked to provide a capsule characterization of the Beethoven trios as opposed to the many other fine ones that the Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio performed, Isaac Stern offered the summation that "Beethoven is constantly driving himself and his performers in a way unknown to any other composer. There is none of the romantic levity one finds in the works of others. He is always deadly in earnest, even when introducing a lighter touch for contrast….."

Irving Kolodin

It is no surprise that Bach featured prominently among her first records. The G major French Suite, in particular, was one of her specialties, and she often programmed a number of preludes and fugues from the WTC. Scarlatti was another composer admired by Hess, and her recording of the two sonatas vividly display her clarity of articulation and sensitivity of touch. Of particular interest among the American Columbia recordings are the works by 20th century composers. … the selections she recorded reveal her to be a superb colorist. ,,,, Perhaps most fascinating is the inclusion of De Falla's showy Ritual Fire Dance, although atypical of her preferred repertoire she carries it off with stylish aplomb."

By Wayne Kiley

The History of the Trio goes back to the year 1950. The place was Prades in the eastern Pyrenees in France. The occasion was a festival commemorating the bicentenary of J.S. Bach's death. The focus of the event was Pablo Casals, who had, through the persuation of Alexander Schneider, agreed to lead the festival and make music again after a self-imposed exile, assumed final.

Eugene Istomin

Despite extraordinary international recognition Myra Hess never assumed the role of famed cosmopolitan soloist. Rather, she remained the archetypal English lady abroad. Even so she conquered America from the first, an appearance at New York in 1922 with a program that included Scarlatti and Bach, Franck and Schumann, Debussy and Chopin. Myra Hess was preparing for an extensive tour of America when war was declared in 1939. Refusing to leave the UK, she soon became involved in a cause which eventually made her name a legend, the war-time National Gallery concerts. Chamber music was, quite simply, a life-long love that inexorably grew to a passion and which perhaps, reached its climax with appearances at Casals' Prades Festival in 1951-1952."

by Bryan Crimp

It was on November 14, 1907, that Hess's official debut took place at Queen's Hall. Accompanying the seventeen-year-old pianist was a conductor named Thomas [not yet Sir Thomas] Beecham. Many years later Hess described the event as "a concert of stupendous length. I played two concertos [Beethoven's Fourth and the Saint-Saëns Fourth] and a group of solos while he [Beecham] seemed to contribute a full-sized orchestra program."

by Donald Manildi

Music - The Universal Language (Musik - Sprache der Welt) presents a series of landmark sessions from Deutsche Grammophon's uniquely rich archive, important recordings of conerstone composers such as Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Dvorák and Grieg; however, it also takes in "modern" composers such as Stravinsky and Falla. And more modern still, from DG's remarkable initiative Musica Nova, a series which championed postwar German composers, come selections of works by Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Karl Höller. A significant number of CD premieres is included.

In February 1954, as part of a promotional campaign, DG produced a now legendary 10-inch LP titled Musik … Sprache der Welt (Music - the Universal Language), that presented selections of its then current recordings. That LP, now a rare collector's item, consisted of extracts of works by the great composers.Each selection had a brief spoken introduction and was intended as a marketing tool for salesmen, to give - as Deutsche Grammophon wrote - "An impression of the breath and quality of our repertoire, a kind of calendar in sound". By reviving the title…. they developed this series to re-create the flavour and the spirit of those times. This 10-CD set of chronologically-ordered orchestral works - from Haydn to Bruckner - features familiar iconic recordings.

"While we often associate Leonard Bernstein's sense of trascendence with his ability to cross musical boundaries… or his skill in discussing and describing that nondiscursive art known as music with his singular eloquence, the two works presented on this recording, The Age of Anxiety and his Serenade after Plato's "Symposium", offer us an alternate perspective on Bernstein's artistry. Throughout his opus, as both a "longhair" composer and a composer of more popular forms, Bernstein had intertwined words with music - taking on Voltaire in Candide, for instance, or setting various psalms for his celebrated collection, The Chichester Psalms. In The Age of Anxiety and Serenade, Bernstein takes us one step further: he uses instrumental music to illustrate, expand, even explicate literary expression. They represent as such a curious reversal of what we can come to expect from this artist."

by Jackson Braider

"Between 1942 and 1945 many American composers made patriotic contributions to the war effort. Notable works included Samuel Barber's Second Symphony, dedicated to the U.S. Army Air Corps, Robert Russell Bennett's Four Freedom Symphony, John Alden's Carpenter's Song of Freedom, "Ellie Siegmeister's Freedom Train, and Randall Thompson's Testament of Freedom. Marc Blitzstein's symphony, The Airborne, falls into this category of works inspired by national crisis, even though it remains almost unknown, a victim of unavoidable delays that ironically led to its performance a year after the war was over."

Steven Ledbetter

"The performances here include Bernstein's first appearance on records as a concerto soloist, as well as three appearances as conductor in works particularly close to him: his own ballet score Facsimile; music for his lifelong friend Aaron Copland; and one of George Gershwin's major scores, which had showed that it was possibler to write for both the Broadway stage and the concert hall - a range that Bernstein himself was to follow all his life"

Steven Ledbetter

"From his first meeting with Copland, Bernstein regarded November 14 as a lucky date: and so it proved to be again in 1943… In August 1943 Artur Rodzinsky, the new music director of the New York Philharmonic, named Bernstein assistant conductor. On Sunday, November 14, 1943, guest conductor Bruno Walter fell ill. Bernstein was awakened that morning with the news that he would have to conduct the concert - on a national radio broadcast - without benefit of a rehearsal. As they say, the rest is history. Bu Monday, Leonard Bernstein was the heir apparent, the American most likely to success as a conductor in his own country, where the field was still dominated by foreign-born musicians"

Steven Ledbetter

"By the end of 1949, when the recordings issued here were made, Leonard Bernstein was beyond the point where he could be regarded a "new" figure on the American musical scene. In six short years - from the dramatic moment of his debut with the New York Philharmonic on nationwide radio, filling in at the last moment for an ailing Bruno Walter - he had shown remarkable gifts first as a conductor, then as a composer in the symphonic world and ballet and then on Broadway . All that in the 13 months between November 14, 1943, and the end of 1944! When World War II ended, Bernstein was able to take up his role as the assistant to Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood. He had promoted the music of his fellow Americans in live performances…. had produced significant recordings of works by two of them. He had appeared as conductor and soloist in a recording of Ravel's Concerto in G. And, naturally, he had recorded a number of his own works."

Steven Ledbetter