This highly appealing collection of light-orchestral classics gathers up eighteen years in the history of one of the world’s most celebrated orchestras during the golden age of the LP.

Ever since its foundation in 1883, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam has been blessed with a hall that, to all intents and purposes, belongs to them. Unlike many of their rivals, they not only perform but rehearse and record in the hall. The hall’s own superb acoustic has always been a further attraction for record companies, and between 1950 and 1968 microphones were frequently set up to record the orchestra.

Those microphones mostly belonged to Decca and to the fledgling local Philips company, and on the podium were not only its music directors – during this period, Eduard van Beinum and, from 1961, Bernard Haitink – but also celebrated guest conductors. There were long-established maestros and friends of the orchestra such as Eugen Jochum, Paul van Kempen and Willem van Otterloo, but also younger, dynamic maestros including Antal Doráti.

Sometimes the juxtapositions of conductor and repertoire are immediately arresting: not only Van Beinum in Sousa but Haitink in Glinka and Verdi. The waltz-suites from Der Rosenkavalier play to Jochum’s under-rated strengths as an operatic conductor. Igor Markevitch conducts the Polovtsian Dances and Russian Easter Festival Overture to the manner born.

The booklet includes an informative and insightful note by Niek Nelissen, as well as cover illustrations of the LPs and EPs that gave rise to this unique collection.

‘The Borodin Dances are up to the splendid and exciting standards reached by Markevitch in his Tchaikovsky symphony recordings.’ - Fanfare, May 1981 (Polovtsian Dances)

‘A remarkably successful performance, It is exciting and it hangs together as a whole … The sound is very good indeed.’ (Finlandia)

‘The strings sound really lovely and the performance has sentiment enough but is never overdone.’ (Elegiac Melodies) - Gramophone, November 1960

‘All three of the flamboyant overtures newly issued are beautifully done.’ - Gramophone, March 1971 (Benvenuto Cellini, Ruslan and Ludmila, La forza del destino)

Tracks:

CD 1
Schubert - Marche militaire no.1 (orch. Guiraud)*
Johann Strauss I - Radetzky March*
- Paul van Kempen

Clarke - Trumpet Voluntary*
Nicolai - Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor: Overture*
Thomas - Mignon: Overture*
Grieg - Two Elegiac Melodies, op.34*
Berlioz - Le Carnaval romain: Overture*
Sibelius - Finlandia, op.26 no.7
- Eduard van Beinum

Glinka - Ruslan and Lyudmila: Overture*
- Bernard Haitink

Rimsky-Korsakov - Russian Easter Festival Overture, op.36
Borodin - Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor, arr. Rimsky-Korsakov)
- Igor Markevitch

CD 2
Verdi - La forza del destino: Sinfonia*
Berlioz - Benvenuto Cellini: Overture*
- Bernard Haitink

Franck - Les Éolides
- Willem van Otterloo

Saint-Saëns - Danse macabre, op.40*
Dvořák - Scherzo capriccioso, op.66*
- Bernard Haitink

Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier: Suites of Waltzes*
- Eugen Jochum

Elgar - Pomp and Circumstance March no.1*
Sousa - Semper fidelis*
- Antal Doráti

Sousa - The Stars and Stripes Forever*
- Eduard van Beinum

* First international release on Decca CD