New for December

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.

"Eine kleine Nachtmusik receives a stylish performance and the recording, though released at much the same time as the Handel, sounds a great deal better. The two Mendelssohn items were first released in the UK on mono MMA11048 and, though the Scottish symphony already had a string of distinguished competitors, William Mann thought it only a little short of the best. I enjoyed hearing this performance. My touchstone is always the transition from the main body of the finale to the coda: the gear change here is a little abrupt but not unduly so. The recording has held up well in this transfer –by comparison with recent offerings such as Gardner on Chandos  extreme treble and bass are somewhat prominent at the expense of middle frequencies. In 1959 listeners had to turn over for the finale, the new transfer makes this unnecessary. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"Though there are Boult Enigmas of earlier and later vintage, I don’t think this 1962 version is available anywhere... Listening again to the Boult, however, I’d now characterise it as sensitive rather than slow. The Falstaff is excellent and the transfer is very good but there is one small problem: it’s not a capital offence and Beulah can neither be blamed for it nor rectify it – the Pye LP used for the transfer was missing the last very quiet note. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

" The Handel performances are stylish and vigorous enough almost to persuade me that the music is better than I recall from other performances – it’s not usually reckoned among Handel’s finest – and the recording, DG Archiv’s first made in England, holds up well. Some very fine performers are listed for the Bach: Ilse Wolf, Helen Watts, Wilfred Brown, Richard Lewis, Edgar Fleet, Thomas Hemsley and (Professor) Thurston Dart on harpsichord continuo. This is vintage Bach but Lionel Salter thought the performance not quite in the same league as the music. He was mainly worried by the fast tempi but nowadays we are used to Bach in less stately guise: Jones’ time of 28:53 overall is actually slightly slower than Richard Hickox’s on Chandos , a highly regarded version . I’m glad that Beulah have resurrected this performance – it’s more in accord with modern attitudes to Bach and I enjoyed it. As with the Handel, the recording has come up sounding well in this transfer. A small plus: the words magnificat and magna are pronounced with a hard g, as it would have been in North Germany in Bach’s time. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"On Mercury  which, in any case, is now available in the UK only as part of a 6-CD download, the Albéniz was somewhat incongruously coupled with Mussorgsky; here the Falla coupling for Doráti’s high-energy performance is much more logical. The recording is good if a trifle brash – reflecting, I believe, the original. If you have the very fine Montréal/Dutoit version of the Falla on Decca the Ansermet is well worth having as an adjunct, especially as the recording has come up very well in this transfer." Brian Wilson at Music Web International

New from Beulah Extra

Beulah Extra downloads are high quality 320kb/s MP3 files. They are not grouped into albums. You can buy any combination of movements or works that you wish.

What the critics say

Here are some recent reviews by Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"Fans of Rubinstein’s masterly Chopin are well served by Beulah this month, with two Beulah Extra tracks: Ballade No.1 in g minor, Op.23 (6BX73) and Scherzo No.1 in B, Op.20 (7BX73), recorded in stereo in 1958" Brian Wilson at Music Web International