Editorial

A Happy New Year to all our customers and visitors to the site!

2006 proved to be a hectic year for Kernow Classics in many different ways.  We gained many new customers from all over the world and a good number of items were snapped up within hours of appearing in the catalogue.  The most collectable and sought-after genre seemed to be 'live' opera, which was somewhat unexpected and I've had to turn a number of customers away as a result - unfortunately these items don't grow on trees! 

During the summer Decca requested my assistance with some of their new releases, a job that proved immensely rewarding but quite exhausting.  It meant that I was unable to listen to as many LPs as I would have liked and couldn't venture far to view collections.  Amongst other tasks Decca commissioned me to choose the tracklistings for Ernest Ansermet and Renata Tebaldi Original Masters collections - many hours of sampling different versions, timing, trying to work out what pieces went well together .  With so much Ansermet material to choose from but only six discs to make up, some wonderful recordings had to be discarded.  I do think however that I struck a good balance between the obvious and the unfamiliar:  the first disc in particular (Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn) might surprise (pleasantly I trust!) some listeners as will Honegger's Le roi David, a wonderfully moving work given the performance of a lifetime! 

The Tebaldi was very much a labour of love, although I did wish sometimes that one could have made use of 'off the air' recordings!  It had been many years since I had listened to the song recitals recorded towards the end of her career and I approached them with a little trepidation, soon found to be largely unjustified.  Some of the songs themselves are absolute gems and are well worthy of rediscovery.  It will be noted that I didn't always opt for arias taken from complete opera sets; frankly I think some of her finest studio performances emanate from the recital discs made in the early-mid 1960s.   

These two boxes will soon be in the shops plus the final Clifford Curzon box and Eugen Jochum's Philips Beethoven symphonies.

Thankfully last summer we did not have the blisteringly hot temperatures experienced by the rest of the country and in Cornwall one is never too far from a sea breeze!  Such time off that I did allow myself was taken up with trips to the beach, watching my son Charlie demolish opponents with his devastating spin bowling and indulging my daughter Morwenna's taste in the Bard by visiting Stratford.  As a family we also took in WOMAD in Reading, something of an annual tradition.

Mozart-mania was duly observed and many of my recent sleeve-notes have reflected this.  I've become a late convert to René Jacobs and his recordings have provided many of the musical highlights of my year's listening, particularly the Così issued some time ago and the more recent Figaro and Clemenza sets (I also caught up with his recordings of The Seasons and Keiser's Croesus).  As preparation for seeing the Glyndebourne Touring Così we saw the 2002 Berliner Staatsoper film with Dorothea Röschmann, Werner Güra et al.  Röschmann also starred in my CD of the year:  Abbado's Zauberflöte on DGG, with Hanno Müller-Brachmann (also featured in the above-mentioned Così film), René Pape and Christoph Strehl.  With these and other fine artists such as Kozená, Fink, Gens, Ciofi and Keenlyside Mozart opera is surely in safe hands for many years to come! It was also a golden year for Mozart reissues with DGG's 1956 Jubilee Edition boxes leading the way.  There's a bewildering and mouth-watering choice out there; one must hope that the deleter's axe does not fall too heavily or too soon.

I've recently taken on a collection of (mainly) chamber recordings dating from the 1950s and 1960s.  The owner lived in New York and had kept them in an immaculate condition.  Much of the collection, including several Budapest String Quartet and Walter Gieseking recordings is now on the site and more will be added at regular intervals including this month some fine Dinu Lipatti, Artur Schnabel and Rudolf Serkin items.  Among those still to be displayed are some Barylli String Quartet, Artur Rubinstein and Hermann Scherchen so watch this space - better still send an email and beat the other collectors ...

Mention of Schnabel takes me back to the time of the miner's strike when I was working in a London record shop.  A customer came in asking for a boxed set of Arthur Scargill playing the Beethoven Piano Concertos!  Another customer misunderstanding happened a few years before that when I was working at the old 363 Oxford Street HMV shop, where the Classical Department was situated in the basement.  A Japanese man was understood to be asking for records of Frank Sinatra and we directed him upstairs to the MOR section on the ground floor.  He seemed rather puzzled but followed our directions and reappeared a few minutes later asking the same question.  Again we sent him up to the ground floor.  When he returned, looking rather annoyed, he asked for a piece of paper and wrote down 'Franck Sonata'.  He eventually got what he wanted!