Julian Bream 1933-2020

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Beulah quoted

I"f you have not yet made their acquaintance, Beulah regularly bring us reissues of historical recordings, from 78s to 1960s stereo, in  transfers as good as any that I have heard, removing as much surface noise as is feasible –practically all in the case of LPs, and even for most 78s –without impairing the tonal  quality." Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"The Beulah record label has always been one of the most idiosyncratic, and therefore perhaps most interesting, of reissue marques. While the basic character of Beulah remains the same as in its Compact Disc days, the range of its present catalogue, driven now by the ease of downloading, has been extended in remarkable fashion. Browsing the Beulah catalogue is now rather like being in a 78rpm record shop: there are plenty of recordings of short pieces available to whet your appetite for either repertoire or artist, while at the same time there are numerous full length works available if you wish to consolidate your collection with, for instance, major symphonies. All of Beulah's transfers, as might be expected of a distinguished reissue label, are of very high quality." David Patmore writing in Classical Recordings Quarterly

"Beulah releases are  available  from  other  suppliers  but  Qobuz  offer  them  in  lossless  sound  for  the  same  price  that others charge for mp3 –in some casesthat’sless than full bit-rate mp3." Brian Wilson at Music Web International 

New for August

Many music lovers miss the sound from vinyl pressings. Many others have yet to discover how great the sound can be. Most of our albums are mastered from vinyl LP pressings and earlier recordings (generally 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.

Our albums are available from many download and streaming sites.

We highly recommend downloading from where you can download or stream in high quality, for the same price as iTunes medium quality.

New albums

What the Critics Say

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International has written an article reviewing our 10 Beethoven 250 albums, the 4 ffrr Pioneer albums and two more albums in our Philharmonia 75 series.

"This and others that I have reviewed in recent months epitomise the strengths of the label: there are other reissues of jazz recordings such as the Bobby Hackett, but many of them were not made with the care with which Beulah reissues are produced. It’s not just a case of stick an LP or 78 on the turntable, edit out the unwanted noise and stick it online, which I suspect frequently happens. Where there is a residual problem, as in this case, with an over-close recording, you can be sure that’s attributable to the original engineers. In fact, it doesn’t spoil the release for me; I just recommend a slightly lower than usual listening level –and streaming or downloading from Qobuz in lossless sound. Just occasionally Qobuz charge a little more than the usual £7.99 for a recording that runs over 80 minutes, but usually –as here –their lossless version costs the same as inferior mp3 from others. And if you must have mp3, even though most portable players now accept lossless recordings, you can come back and get that, too. "Best of all, if, like me, you know what jazz you like but aren’t well informed, Beulah have a treasure trove of these reissues –and they have recently rejigged their website to point you in the right direction; in this case to Jazz at Beulah.I didn’t realise that Hackett had been a member of the Glenn Miller Band in the 1940s till I researched this recording. "Beulah are educating me, as they did last month when I reviewed Star Dust, their reissue of music by Charlie Christian (1PS65)."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"Even those who read these pages, if not in the market for Abide with me, should find plenty to interest them  here, with not just the more predictable classics such as a shortened version of the William Tell Overture, which goes down very well with the audience, but six minutes of selections from Elgar’s Severn Suite and 12 minutes of Ireland’s A Downland Suite. The latter, though sometimes performed in a string arrangement, was composed in 1932 for this very brass band championship, so it was hot off the press.

"The closing Homeland Melodies will remind older listeners of the UK Theme which used to open proceedings on Radio 4 first thing in the morning, though it casts its net wider than these shores.

"You wouldn’t expect crystal clear sound from recordings of this vintage, but I doubt that you would hear them better transferred –again, of course, with the lossless Qobuz transfers the top recommendation. As you have probably guessed, there’s also a Brass and Military section on the Beulah site –in fact, it’s one of their specialities."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"This is another very desirable reissue in Beulah’s Philharmonia 75 series. John Ogdon and Vladimir Ashkenazy famously drew in the Moscow Piano Competition; Ogdon played Liszt Piano Concerto No.1 and MephistoWaltz, and Ashkenazy Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 and Dumkain e minor.

"Both these recordings are available as part of a 5¼-hour Warner set, John Ogdon –70th Anniversary Edition, but Beulah give us two of the finest performances in that set in a more manageable form. Like all the best interpreters of the Rachmaninov –including Katin, Ashkenazy, Hough and, most recently, Trifonov , Ogdon lets the music speakfor itself without over-‘interpretation’ ."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"The main item of interest here is the recording of The Planets. It was Boult who first made them to shine, in 1919, according to the composer, and he recorded the music many times. Many of those recordings remain in the catalogue, including his 1978 version, made at the age of 90. The Beulah recording offers a very worthwhile adjunct, in a startlingly good transfer which sounds more like mid-1950s mono than something from ten years earlier. The quality is due to the fact that a recording engineer forgot to turn off the limitation of the upper frequency range: thus HMV accidentally produced their first ffrr recording. No wonder that AR thought the recording ‘more actual than anything we have had before and should almost cause heart failure from excitement’.

"It’s interesting to note that, while most of Boult’s chosen tempi remained constant over the 33-year span, some movements became slightly faster over the years; this was one conductor whom age did not  weary.    Equally  noteworthy:  though  there  are  slight  differences,  both  recordings do  the  music ."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"The solo part of this recital contains all but two Chopin pieces from an album of what appear to have been random personal favourites, released in 1959 and still well worth hearing. Katin was such a fine and versatile pianist that, while the Bach and Scarlatti arehardly authentic as played on the piano, theyemerge as very fine pieces, if somewhat different from how they sound on the harpsichord. The two Scarlatti works in particular feature the kind of sensitive playing that makes Angela Hewitt’s Bach on the piano such worthwhile alternatives.

" The Schumann, Brahms and Rachmaninov, too, were well worth reissuing, while the Mendelssohn works which conclude the programme were staples of the Decca catalogue for many years; there’s an inexpensive download, complete with nostalgic cover shot, coupled with the Mendelssohn piano concertos, with the LSO and Anthony Collins. The two shorter concertante pieces were originally coupled with Liszt Totentanz on an LP which the great Trevor Harvey strongly recommended. Who am I to demur? The 1954 sound has worn extremely well."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"Very little is required in recommending these classic recordings. The Dvořák is one of my favourite recordings –somewhere at the back of the cupboard I have the DG reissue, still available as download, with Bloch and Bruch, though more expensive than when it was a budget-price CD, and more expensive than this Beulah reissue, which sounds hardly inferior to that official transfer. Recommendable as the DG coupling is, Beulah go one better with the Schumann.

"That, too, remains available on a Regis CD, with music by Britten and Debussy, but, again, the Beulah coupling has the edge and, though the Regis CD sells for around the same price as the Beulah download, the Regis download costs more in lossless sound. With very good Beulah transfers of both concertos, why hesitate?"

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"Askenase’s Chopin was always, undeservedly, somewhat overshadowed by Rubinstein. The Concert Rondo here serves as a reminder of his recordings of the two piano concertos; that of No.2, with Leopold Ludwig from 1960, is available on Beulah 1PS9, with solo Chopin works from Rubinstein and Paderewski. The Rondo originally appeared on LP with a recording of the first piano concerto which had the misfortune to appear at the same time as the now classic Pollini recording; I’m pleased that Beulah have at least rescued this free-wheeling performance.

"Above all, this Beulah album is worth having for the Rachmaninov alone. Even with so many recordings to its name, the concerto comes over very enjoyably in this perky performance, and the 1962 sound has come up sounding very well. If the piano is recorded very prominently, that’s appropriate in this music by a pianist composer; the balance is much less tilted in Weber’s favour in the music by her namesake."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"Wanda Landowska was a pioneer harpsichordist, so it’s surprising to hear her play Mozart on the modern concert grand –so much so that the Gramophone review of this LP (RCA RB16017) inadvertently attributed her playing to her usual instrument. That error apart, AP wrote a well-considered rave review of this recording.

" Nowadays we might prefer to hear these sonatas on the fortepiano, asper Kristian Bezuidenhout’s recordings for Harmonia Mundi, but Landowska on the piano reminds me of Angela Hewitt’s Bach –never overdone, tastefully phrased, with a lightness of touch, and unobtrusively decorated, but still bringing out the strength of these early works...so this Beulah single album selection is very welcome.

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

"The Mozart Horn Concertos which Dennis Brain recorded with Herbert von Karajanin 1953 are abiding classics of the recorded repertoire, which continued selling at full price on LP and CD for many years longer than most recordings. Beulah have already given us Nos. 3 and 4 on an earlier Philharmonia 75 recording(4PS58). If you have that, you should find the addition of this album irresistible, with the addition of the Hindemith and Richard Strauss works a bonus.

"Others may have equalled Brain in the Mozart, but never excelled him, and the rest of the programme is of much more than historical value. Even the 1947 recording of the Strauss Concerto No.1 has come up sounding as well as could be –after their accidental encounter with ffrr in 1945 (Boult at the BBC, above), HMV returned to their old ways, but the 1947 sound, the oldest here,is more than tolerable.

"The ability to listen to the music via a decent DAC makes it all the more important to remind readers that Qobuz offer Beulah recordings in lossless flac, equivalent in quality to my press previews, rather than the mp3 offered byother suppliers."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

There may be many recordings of Vaughan Williams Job–A Masque for Dancing, but it never seems to have established itself, perhaps because VW wrote so much beautiful music that it has tended to be side-lined in favour of the more immediate appeal of The Lark Ascending. I first got to know it well from Sir Adrian Boult’s EMI recording."

"His 1953 (mono) Decca ...Best of all, it’s on a Beulah collection Twentieth Century Classics 4 (4PDR20), with Rawsthorne Street Corner and HindemithViolin Concerto."

Brian Wilson at Musicweb International

Ballet music at Beulah

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Brass and Military at Beulah

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Early music at Beulah

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Jazz at Beulah

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Light Music at Beulah

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Piano music at Beulah

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Opera at Beulah

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Vocal at Beulah

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