New for January

The greatest musical instrument is the human voice. 2016 is the year of the voice at Beulah. Many great voices are to be featured, some well known, most however are unjustly forgotten. Visit our Great Voices page. From here you can download great voices not yet available in our albums. This page will expand during the course of 2016 so do visit it monthly to view additions.

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.

	Coming soon

What the Critics Say

The following are reveiws by Brian Wilson at Music Web International

Recordings of the year - 2015
"- There have been many fine reissues this year... and much as I’d like to include the reissue of Pierre Monteux’s recording of Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony (Beulah), the clear favourite is the release on a single blu-ray audio disc of Sir Georg Solti’s complete Wagner Ring Cycle."

"If I hail the Monteux recording of the symphony as a very special old friend, that doesn’t mean that I’m disregarding the concerto This Beulah reissue is good value for the Concerto and mandatory for the Symphony."

"This classic recording of the Fireworks Music in many ways marked the beginning of Handel’s music being performed with period awareness in that Mackerras assembled a host of London musicians in the original proportions: 62 wind and nine percussion. In order to get them all together, the recording had to be made at night. Though Mackerras later repeated the exercise and others have come even closer to period practice the 1958 recording remains of great value.

"The Testament reissue of the Fireworks comes with more Handel as coupling but many will prefer the Beulah coupling of more music for wind ensemble, this time from the renowned Eastman players and Frederick Fennell, a selection from a Mercury recording which was released in the UK in 1960. 

"The Handel performance was well worth reviving, the ex-Mercury items even more so. The transfers have been done with Beulah’s customary skill: I doubt if even the master tapes could yield better results, though with the usual caveat that the wav files which I receive are of better quality than iTunes’ mp3."

"This (American) Columbia recording of Carnival of the Animals, with a new commentary by Ogden Nash, was first released on its own on a 10” Philips LP in the UK.  The Beulah release stands or falls by whether you like to hear the music on its own – as I definitely prefer – or to have it interrupted with an all-too-clever commentary.  If you prefer the latter, then you could hardly hope for better than Noël Coward’s equally clever delivery.  The orchestral performance is good and the mono recording has been well transferred for its age but for me it’s a shame that some desirable Beecham and Barbirolli recordings and the final Alborada del gracioso, all in stereo, appear in company with this version of Carnival of the Animals.  Still, it’s inexpensive enough if you purchase it for its second two thirds.

" Dan Morgan praised the Decca Eloquence recording which contains Wolff’s Alborada – review – and I’m equally pleased with the Beulah transfer.  I haven’t heard the Eloquence, but I doubt if, though transferred from the master tapes, it sounds much better than what Beulah have conjured out of the grooves of SXL2105, itself always something of a demonstration LP. "

Recording of the month - Dec 2015

"This is superb: there have been many fine interpreters of Delius but none finer than Beecham. With his EMI recordings tied up in box sets and only the 1952 Hassan excerpts available separately on Naxos Historical, this very well-filled Beulah reissue is especially welcome, especially for the Florida Suite.

"The 1952 mono items have come up sounding infinitely better than I remember from the Philips Concert Classics LP on which I first heard them – only a little thinness betrays their age. The other items have come up sounding as well as on the 6-CD set Beecham conducts English Music .

"Beecham’s stereo recordings of Over the Hills and Far Away and Summer Night on the River will be included in another Beulah release of music by Grainger and Delius, due for release shortly (9PD82). "

Reissue of the month - Dec 2015

"I’m convinced that the Thought Police have been reading my mind. Last month Beulah revived Pierre Monteux’s recording of Dvorák’s Seventh Symphony, which remains for me one of the best ever (2PD45, with Violin Concerto – Reissue of the Month). Now it’s the turn of Rafael Kubelík’s Concerto for Orchestra with the RPO. This fine RPO recording seems to be otherwise available only in a massive Warner box set.

" Even when first released in mono in 1959, the HMV recording outshone its competitors. The Beulah transfer of the stereo version is very good indeed – it hardly sounds its age – and the performance is first-rate, especially if you find the two Solti recordings (LSO and Chicago) a little too up-front. I shall still turn to the Solti versions but in other moods I’m glad to have the Kubelík, which I once owned on a World Record Club reissue, to hand again.

" If the other works on this Beulah reissue are not quite such classics, they certainly don’t detract from its value. The Britten is a reminder that Eugene Ormandy’s performances of British music are well worth hearing – I’m thinking of his Delius, too – and it’s good to have Constant Lambert’s own recording of The Rio Grande in a clean transfer which sounds more like early LP than 78s.

" It was a nice touch to use a photo of the Rio Grande for the cover. Unfortunately, it’s a bit off-beam: the Rio Grande depicted is the actual river in the USA, but the imaginary Rio Grande of the Sitwell poem is supposed to be in Brazil. "

Listen to Beulah at Spotify

You can now listen to Beulah albums for free at Spotify.