Elly Ameling - The Philips Recitals

Description

A glorious celebration of 'the Dutch nightingale'- all of Elly Ameling's song-recital albums for Philips in one original-covers box, including a premiere CD release for her first-ever recording.

All of Elly Ameling's recital discs for Philips (together with Schubert trios and quartets she recorded for Deutsche Grammophon) collected for the first time.

A 29-CD Limited Edition Box - a true almanac of song.

Several tracks are released on CD and digitally for the first time; several albums released complete on Decca for the first time.

Nearly 26 hours of a wealth of song.

Songs in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

Many of the recordings recognized in their day with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d'Or and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis.

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognised with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis.

She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire.

It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

Her career began in earnest soon after she won a Dutch singing competition in 1956, when a recording was made of the 'Laudate Dominum' from Mozart's Dominican Vespers, K.

321, issued by Philips on a 45rpm record and quickly forgotten.

Only now has it been transferred to CD, from a rare copy of the disc in the collection of the Dutch writer Ren? Seghers.

In his new booklet essay for this box, Seghers explains the story behind the recording, and analyses the elusive art of Ameling, informed by his own interviews with her.

She recorded with pleasure, and brought an imagined audience into the studio with her, and her communicative gifts transferred readily to the microphone.

Philips captured her in Baroque cantatas by Vivaldi and Handel, and in the central German Lied repertoire from Haydn, Mozart and Schubert (eight glorious albums, including his little-known theatre music) to Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch and M?rike-Lieder.

Digitally recorded in 1982, Ameling's 'An die Musik' Schubert album had the distinction of being the first Lieder recital to appear on CD, and still deserves the accolades heaped upon it then.

Though they were made in the CD era, and received with just as much lavish praise as their predecessors, Ameling's later Philips albums have become collectors' items, and several of them receive their first reissue in this box.

There are even two albums of jazz standards, which Ameling sings in inimitable style.