New for August

The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts held over  eight weeks from July to September is London's biggest annual music festival. Visit our Proms page where we list music being performed this year that is available from us.

New from iTunes

Many music lovers miss the sound from vinyl pressings. Many others have yet to discover how pleasant the sound can be. Most of our albums are mastered from vinyl LP pressings and earlier recordings (before 1953) from 78 rpm discs. It is our ability to recreate, in the digital age, the sound from the disc era that many of our customers find most enjoyable.

Unlike modern digital recordings tracks in our albums do contain some distortion, and the occasional surface noises, but for many listeners these "defects" are soon forgotten.

What the Critics Say

The following are reveiws by Brian Wilson at Music Web International "With a very able quartet of soloists – Gré Brouwenstijn, Kerstin Meyer, Nicolai Gedda and Frederick Guthrie – and St. Hedwig’s Cathedral Choir this 1958 ADD/stereo recording was well worth reviving, especially as it’s otherwise imprisoned in a 5-CD EMI/Erato box set. The performance is good throughout: if I’m being hyper-critical, the first movement is a little slow and portentous and the scampering scherzo a shade on the fast side, but Beethoven often is pompous, so these are hardly major faults. The singing in the finale is very good and the Beulah transfer a big improvement on the original LP." "The Concerto is a safe recommendation, which doesn’t mean stodgy, in a good transfer of the 1962 release. The Cluytens performance of the Symphony is even better." "Not surprisingly, in view of the classic status of this recording, it’s one of Beulah’s best sellers, even though the sound – on six 78 sides – was not good even for its time. Beulah have done the best possible to make this bearable, especially in reducing 78 hiss and crackle to almost zero without losing anything else. The solo voices, always the strong feature of the recording, come over well." " Collections such as this used to be common on LP, though not usually from such a variety of sources, and I imagine that many will be tempted to purchase this from AmazonUK and iTunes. The Boskovsky performances are particularly treasurable; though they remain available in several Decca all-Strauss concoctions their inclusion here is very welcome. The other items, too, are enjoyable and the recordings have all come up well. You may also be tempted to go for another Beulah release, The Waltz King, offering the music of Johann Strauss II. Sample/stream from Qobuz, who also offer the least expensive download at £4.79. " It’s a tender performance of a work that doesn’t deserve to have slipped out of fashion and the recording has come up extremely well for its age, with just a touch of 78 crackle in the quieter moments. Neither soloist nor conductor lays on the schmaltz too thick, so this remains as tasteful as it was judged to be in 1940."

Beulah Extra

Beulah Extra features tracks that we have not found space for within our albums. You can trawal throught all the tracks or just use the search box on our Beulah Extra site.