The third volume of Boult's complete Decca recordings features Boult the insightful accompanist and inspired Russian interpreter, featuring many long-unavailable and newly remastered Decca recordings. Limited Edition.

After twenty years as the BBC's director of music, Sir Adrian Boult was unceremoniously 'retired' by the corporation in 1950. Still in the prime of his career, Boult continued to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra as its chief conductor, but meanwhile began to make commercial recordings for English labels such as Decca and Nixa, enabling American audiences in particular to hear a conductor previously confined by and large to his own shores, and in top-of-the-range studio engineering.

While Decca capitalised on Boult's reputation as a master of English and choral repertoire, with a pioneering Vaughan Williams symphony cycle, mono and stereo versions of Messiah and much else made available in the two companion boxes on Decca Eloquence, the label also took advantage of his easy relations with many of the great instrumental soloists of the day. At the BBC Proms and elsewhere, he had made music with the likes of Alfredo Campoli, Mischa Elman and Sir Clifford Curzon for decades, and there is a special familiarity and ease of communication about their concerto recordings together. Boult also partnered exciting younger virtuosos such as the pianists Peter Katin and Friedrich Gulda, always attentive and dynamic in partnership. The new box brings together both mono and stereo-era versions of Dohnányi's once-popular Nursery variations and Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody in which Boult strikes up an intuitive rapport with Julius Katchen.

Boult's very versatility told against him: sometimes viewed then and now as a good all-rounder, he loses nothing to the competition for authentically Russian fire and balletic grace in symphonies by Tchaikovsky (the Third) and Rachmaninoff (the Second and Third, originally made by Decca but issued by RCA). Prokofiev suites are infused with wit and pungent orchestral colour. And whichever orchestra he was conducting, Boult elicited the best from them with collegial authority – even the very French-sounding winds of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra. This 'original covers' box restores the recordings to their LP couplings and features a new essay on Boult by Nigel Simeone.

TRACKLISTING:

CD 1
BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto
Ruggiero Ricci
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 2
CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 1
Friedrich Gulda
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 3
SAINT-SAËNS Cello Concerto No. 1
LALO Cello Concerto
Zara Nelsova
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 4
BRUCH Violin Concerto No. 1
WIENIAWSKI Violin Concerto No. 2
Mischa Elman
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 5
TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto
Suite No. 3
Mischa Elman
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra

CD 6
MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto
BRUCH Scottish Fantasia
Alfredo Campoli
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 7
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 3
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 8
TCHAIKOVSKY Ouverture Solennelle '1812'
Hamlet – Fantasy Overture
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 9
RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 1
TCHAIKOVSKY Concert Fantasia
Peter Katin
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 10
RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2
FRANCK Variations symphoniques
LITOLFF Scherzo
Sir Clifford Curzon
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 11
RACHMANINOFF Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini
DOHNÁNYI Variations on a Nursery Song
1954 recordings
Julius Katchen
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 12
RACHMANINOFF Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini
DOHNÁNYI Variations on a Nursery Song
1959 recordings
Julius Katchen
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 13
RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 14
RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 3
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Russian Easter Festival Overture
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 15
PROKOFIEV Lieutenant Kijé
The Love for Three Oranges
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra

CD 16
MAHLER Kindertotenlieder
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Kirsten Flagstad
Wiener Philharmoniker