This collection belonged to the late Hugh Scully, a much-loved and respected broadcaster not only here in the South-Western corner of England but throughout the United Kingdom and indeed, the world.  He presented the ever-popular Antiques Roadshow and viewers may recall his award-winning documentaries on Margaret Thatcher and the Falkland’s War.  His passion for classical music and piano recordings was immense and he became a very familiar figure in the record shops of London, Europe and the USA.  

​The collection, much of which is yet to be listed, is wide-ranging.  Thus far I have concentrated mainly on processing LPs of pianists and admirers of Soviet-era virtuosi will be amazed at the vast quantities of Sviatoslav Richter, early Vladimir Ashkenazy and Emil Gilels on offer.  There are also numerous Vladimir Horovitz, Alexis Weissenberg, Artur Rubinstein, Maurizio Pollini, Claudio Arrau, Julius Katchen, Clifford Curzon, Shura Cherkassky and Alicia de Larrocha LPs and CDs plus the Philips Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century series.  Among string players you will find unfamiliar Salvatore Accardo, Oleg Kagan, Josef Suk, Nathan Milstein, Oscar Shumsky, Rudolf Barshai, Mischa Maisky, Rostropovich and Maurice Gendron.   Hugh Scully clearly loved the Germanic nineteenth-century repertoire and I would hazard a guess that there is scarcely a recording of a Beethoven, Schumann or Brahms Piano Concerto that he did not own on LP or CD (and very often the same recording in both formats and with different fillers!)
 
We are working on developing a search engine that will help you to find that elusive copy you are looking for.  In the meantime, if you are short of browsing time and have specific requests, please email us at enquiries@kernowclassics.co.uk.  We would love to hear from you! 

Kernow Classics is honoured and delighted to be able to bring to the market the most remarkable private collection of discs that we have ever seen, comprising an estimated twenty thousand LPs and at least the same number of CDs.

The first 250 LPs, chosen at random from this vast and lovingly cared-for collection, are now available in our catalogue, and demonstrate the incredible quality and depth of this remarkable treasure-trove of discs. 

The pride of the collection thus far is this wonderfully silent first edition blue/silver copy of Columbia SAX 2388 (Igor Oistrakh playing Brahms Violin Sonatas). 

Other special highlights include a lovely copy of Columbia blue/silver SAX 2357 (Tchaikovsky Symphony 4 – Karajan) and the Bach Cello Suites beautifully played by Maurice Gendron on Philips (6770 005).  There are also plenty of unusual Decca SXL LPs, immaculate DGG recordings and mono Columbias (33CX) as well as several collectable live recordings of famous pianists and violinists.  And this is just the first 250 LPs!

Other highlights from the first release of 250 discs now on our catalogue include several piano discs by Maurizio Pollini, Sviatoslav Richter, Alicia de Larrocha, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Emil Gilels, Jorge Bolet, Lazar Berman, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Artur Rubinstein; violin recitals by Ruggiero Ricci, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Josef Suk, Jan Kubelik and Joseph Szigeti and cello recordings featuring Maurice Gendron, Jacqueline du Pré, Yo Yo Ma and Rostropovitch.  There are also some vocal and operatic items (including a wonderful ‘live’ Trovatore featuring Jussi Bjőrling). Many more will be added in coming months.

All items from this stunning collection can be recognised by their unique reference numbers which begin with the letters KH.   

We are planning to add roughly 250 LPs to the catalogue every two weeks throughout the autumn and winter months.  There will also be CDs added, many of which are sealed and therefore not played, as are indeed many of the LPs.  It will be noted that several items are factory test pressings.

Because of the vast quantity of superlative LPs to process, only those more sought after LPs (priced competitively but at more than £40) have been auditioned prior to listing.  The remainder have been visually graded under a strong light and any suspect passages have been carefully listened to.  We will however clean and listen to all LPs as they are ordered to meet our own high quality standards of customer service and satisfaction.

We will be highlighting our favourite finds from each batch of discs on our home page, in future blog posts and on our Facebook page too, so please visit us often and share in our discoveries!

At the Met however it was a different story: throughout the 1930s Tibbett remained hugely popular – live broadcasts of his Germont père (Traviata) (with two other home-grown American singers Rosa Ponselle and Frederick Jagel - available in our next catalogue GEMM 235/6), Simon Boccanegra (alongside Elisabeth Rethberg, Giovanni Martinelli, Ezio Pinza and the young Leonard Warren) and Iago (Otello with Rethberg and Martinelli) have become the stuff of legend, hugely admired even by those who normally listen only to modern recordings.  Another magnificent interpretation but rarely heard nowadays in PC-conscious times is that of Erich Gruenberg’s Emperor Jones, (one of several modern roles Tibbett undertook) based on Eugene O’Neill’s powerful drama.
 
However the voice did not last and recordings from the early 1940s onwards show considerable deterioration to that inimitable, darkly resonant sound.  Of many reasons for this decline, one stands out: Tibbett was given to fast-living.  An inveterate womaniser and party-goer, he came out second-best in a messy ​

divorce and his taste for alcohol, picked up during the Prohibition era, soon became an obsession and then an embarrassment.  His second marriage (from 1932) was less fraught but he was unable to resist the many demands that his socialite wife made upon his time; instead of resting after performances he would arrive home to find a party in full swing.  It is also thought that Tibbett caused irreparable damage by continuing to sing whilst suffering from a severe sore throat after catching cold during an outside concert.  In 1954, not long after a glittering event celebrating Tibbett’s thirtieth anniversary with the Metropolitan Opera, his car was written off following a collision with a pick-up truck and he was arrested for drink-driving.  From that moment his life slid further downhill and he looked considerably older than his sixty-four years by the time of his death in 1960.
 
Tibbett’s recorded legacy is highly impressive: the early recordings for RCA Victor of popular operatic arias from Pagliacci, Barber of Seville, Carmen, Tosca, Ballo in maschera etc positively leap from the grooves as do his recordings of Russian and German songs (available from our catalogue VICS 1340).  All live recordings are worth investigating for their sheer weight of sound, nuance and acting insights (for relaxation Shakespeare was his preferred reading), even those recorded after his voice had lost its bloom such as his anguished Golaud Pelléas et Mélisande (1944) and his terrifying Michele in Tabarro (1946).  The film songs are a delight as are his off-the-air pop songs such as Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” and Harold Arlen’s “Accentuate The Positive” both of which he often sang on radio.  George Gershwin stated that his ideal Porgy would be a ‘black Larry Tibbett’ and thankfully there are recordings not only of Tibbett performing Porgy’s music but that of Crown and other characters.  It’s a voice that comes along once in a blue moon.  The blue moon has yet to reappear.    

​© 2016 James Murray

The other day I came across a lengthy list I had compiled as a child of the recordings my family owned.  It made intriguing reading and made me wonder to what extent it coincides with similar recollections of collectors around the world. 

There was a sizeable number of 78s which included the Gieseking Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, Furtwängler’s Beethoven’s Fifth & Tchaikovsky Pathétique (although as a youngster I found the first and last movements both tragic and scary), Egon Petri’s Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, Rawicz and Landauer arrangements of Mendelssohn, Isobel Baillie and Kathleen Ferrier duets, Ketèlbey conducting G&S, the Trumpet Voluntary, and D’Oyly Carte G&S acoustic and early electric HMV recordings. 
 
It was a long time before the family invested in stereo but we owned all the Decca D’Oyly Cartes and several Decca LXTs (I vividly remember Knappertsbusch Wagner orchestral pieces, one of many we later swapped for the Decca Ace of Clubs pressings, and Ansermet’s Scheherazade and Prince Igor Dances) plus a few Klemperer and Karajan mono Columbias. 

Gradually our collection was bolstered by numerous Decca Ace of Clubs (ACL) and Concert Hall Record Club LPs as well as the HMV Concert Classics series (XLP) and to judge by requests I receive to seek out older recordings there is a sizeable number of collectors nostalgic for these early reissues.  (If that sounds like you, you can find many examples to buy in our latest catalogue, or if it's easier, just contact me and I'll search them out for you.)

As my interest in opera increased we collected Ferenc Fricsay’s Mozart operas on DGG – possibly because of the luxurious packaging but still among my favourite versions – with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Ernst Haefliger, Josef Greindl, Maria Stader, Rita Streich, Irmgard Seefried et al and after seeing Welsh National Opera perform Barber of Seville, Vittorio Gui’s ‘Glyndebourne’ recording on HMV Angel with Victoria De Los Angeles, Luigi Alva, Ian Wallace and Sesto Bruscantini became a much-played favourite.

Welcome to our new website.  It’s been a busy start to the year consolidating new projects for Kernow Classics.  Although based in Cornwall I take the opportunity whenever possible to visit towns and cities ‘up country’ delivering talks to Recorded Music Societies and other music groups; over the years I have established friendly relationships with societies as far away as York and Leicester in addition to those in Stroud, Cirencester, Bournemouth and Torquay which are rather closer to home.
 
Initially I offered just the one talk on Emmanuel Chabrier, the composer with whom I have become most closely associated.  And because I believe in providing audiences with something more than just a simple talk, as an ‘extra’ I recreate his astonishing collection of impressionist paintings on cards around the room as well as photographs and portraits depicting his domestic life and illustrations of operatic production from Chabrier’s time to the present day.  It’s started something of a precedent and audiences for my talks now expect similar additional detail which of course I am happy to provide.
 
Since my first talk on Chabrier, each year I’ve added a different subject drawn from my other areas of expertise: George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Music in Germany between the wars, Eduard Künneke, and the Mozart-Da Ponte operas.  This year’s new subject is Albert Lortzing, a composer close to my heart since my early years when my opera-mad uncle gave me each Christmas a singer recital or a highlights LP featuring this delightful, highly talented but shamefully neglected (in the UK at any rate) composer.  My first Lortzing talk will take place in Leicester on 8 November 2016 and more will follow in Torquay (1 February 2017) and York (date to be confirmed).

If any of this sounds interesting for your society or group, please do get in touch and I can tailor something for you to suit.  You can contact me here.
 
Other plans this year include furthering my research on the German operetta composer Eduard Künneke and his fascinating daughter Evelyn (a complete discography for Eduard that I have been compiling over the last year or so is more or less complete) and on researching into singers connected with the opera in Berlin and Vienna throughout the twentieth century. 
 
Blogs will appear regularly on a variety of musical subjects (the stormy “fliegende Holländer” weather we have been experiencing in Cornwall in the shape of Storm Imogen gives me an idea!) and of course comments are welcome.