The second volume of Sir Adrian Boult's Decca legacy brings together the conductor's Messiah recordings of 1954 and 1960, plus Baroque and sacred music recitals from Kenneth McKellar, Kirsten Flagstad and Kathleen Ferrier. Limited Edition.

While hardly a 'period-instrument' pioneer, Sir Adrian Boult had a much surer sense of authentic Handelian style than most of his contemporaries. Editions and performances of Handel's masterpiece were still often cut and loaded with Romantic trappings in 1935 when Julian Herbage prepared the most complete version of the score yet made, with Handel's original instrumentation. Boult began performing this version in 1942 and it was the obvious choice for a new, refreshing perspective on the piece when he came to record it for Decca in 1954.

Listeners and critics alike were struck by the energy of Boult's direction, the purity and simplicity of the solo singing and the vivid Decca engineering. These qualities also distinguished the stereo remake, made with similarly slimmed-down forces and featuring Dame Joan Sutherland on the top line. She also contributed to the success of Boult's Acis and Galatea from 1959, and the box is completed with a series of glorious vocal recitals, from the tenor Kenneth McKellar, the soprano Kirsten Flagstad and the contralto Kathleen Ferrier, all accompanied by Boult in Baroque repertoire with the sensitivity to line that made him so underrated and underused as an opera conductor.

Ferrier recorded this selection of Bach and Handel arias a year before her death in 1952, but eight years later Boult and the LPO returned to the studios to produce a stereo accompaniment for the album, which the Decca producer James Walker mixed with Ferrier's part from 1952: an early and remarkably successful example of the technology later used to 'update' classic recordings of Caruso and Callas.

TRACKLISTING:

CDs 1–3
HANDEL Messiah
Jennifer Vyvyan · Norma Procter
George Maran · Owen Brannigan
London Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus

CDs 4–6
HANDEL Messiah
Joan Sutherland · Grace Bumbry
Kenneth McKellar · David Ward
London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus

CDs 7–8
HANDEL Acis and Galatea
Joan Sutherland · Peter Pears
Philomusica of London

CD 9
FAMOUS HANDEL SONGS AND ARIAS
J.S. BACH Sheep may safely graze; Air (Suite No. 3)
Kenneth McKellar
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
CLARKE Trumpet Voluntary
BRITTEN God Save the Queen
London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Kenneth Alwyn · Benjamin Britten

CD 10
A RECITAL OF BACH & HANDEL ARIAS
1953 Recording
Kathleen Ferrier
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 11
A RECITAL OF BACH & HANDEL ARIAS
1960 Stereo Remake
Kathleen Ferrier
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 12
BACH & HANDEL RECITAL
Kirsten Flagstad
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 13
GREAT SACRED SONGS
Mendelssohn; Gruber; Gounod
Parry; Bortniansky; Wade; Liddle
Kirsten Flagstad
London Philharmonic Orchestra