New for January

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.

Our albums are available from many  and streaming sites.

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

New albums

	Coming soon

What the Critics Say

"There are many very fine more recent recordings of Der Hirt auf dem Felsen but none to excel Suzanne Danco’s classic account which has come up sounding very well in this transfer. Brendel, too, recorded the Impromptus again, but these early recordings are full of the youthful blend of enthusiasm and sensitivity which brought him to our attention in Mozart and Schubert on the likes of Vox and World Record Club before Philips snapped him up. No.3 is the beautiful Rosamunde-inspired Impromptu. The piano tone is a little harsh, which is typical of these early Brendel recordings, but it’s not a serious problem.

"This typically well-filled Beulah album is well worth having for these three tracks alone but the classic Végh Quartet account of String Quartet No.13, not otherwise available except in multi-CD sets, is the cherry on top. Like Impromptu No.3, the slow movement is derived from Rosamunde. It’s almost as sublimely wistful as that of Schubert’s String Quintet and the Végh players bring out that quality eminently well.

The 1933 Henry Wood Unfinished is more of a curiosity, though sounding surprisingly well for its age, with just a little surface noise. The performance is interesting for the fact that Wood moves the first movement along faster and keeps the listener’s interest better than many more recent recordings which sometimes end up sounding like two slow movements; he’s faster, for example, than the very fine Norrington recording on period instruments (Erato) and much faster than Claudio Abbado (DG).

"This is an attractive release, best downloaded or streamed from Qobuz – follow link – in lossless sound rather than in mp3 from other sites."

Brian Wilson at MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL where you can read the full review

REISSUE OF THE MONTH

"More recent and better-recorded versions of these works there may be – for example, Howard Shelley with the London Mozart Players in the Mendelssohn or Stephen Hough with CBSO and Lawrence Foster in the same coupling plus Rondo Brillant and Serenade and Allegro – but these Moura Lympany recordings were well worth reviving and not just out of a sense of nostalgia.

" The automatic reaction is to say that Lympany is at her best in the gentler music but, though those more expert than me on the Rachmaninov Preludes have sometimes thought her playing a little lacking in muscularity, I found that she sheds light on all these works, not least the often-under-rated Saint- Saëns: LS thought the performance ‘fluent and sparkling’ back in 1951 and I couldn’t put it better.

"The earliest recording, from 1945, is rather dry but acceptable and transferred with hardly a hint of 78 surface noise. The 1951-2 recordings have come up sounding very well, if a little over-bright and a trifle congested at times in the Khachaturian. If the three Rachmaninov Preludes prompt you to explore Lympany’s complete 1951 recording, you can find that on an inexpensive Naxos Classical Archives download . Alternatively, they are available on a 2-CD download-only Decca set, with Piano Concerto No.3 and the Khachaturian but the Beulah selection will be enough for many listeners, especially as this is the only way to obtain the Saint-Saëns short of one of two multi-box Decca sets." "

Brian Wilson at MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL where you can read the full review

"The Ansermet items are particularly recommendable. The Russian Easter Festival Overture is my favourite Rimsky work.

" Piero Gamba’s Rossini Overtures were also a classic of their time. Beulah’s offering of this lively account William Tell is very enjoyable in its own right. Several of these were Decca demonstration-quality in their day and they still sound well in these transfers. Only the Mercury Antal Doráti 1812 brings out bigger guns than this Kenneth Alwyn recording – shades of those Sunday evening concerts with live cannon blackening the Albert Hall. Cluytens’ Beethoven is always worth hearing, too. That’s five strong recommendations, then, with some other attractive recordings thrown in. All the transfers sound good or very good for their age. ."

Brian Wilson at MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL where you can read the full review

JAZZ REISSUE OF THE MONTH

" Stéphane Grappelli (violin) and Django Reinhardt (guitar) made a number of recordings with the Quintet of the Hot Club de France between 1935 and 1946 and some of these have been gathered with the title St Louis Blues on a BEULAH release,1PS22[69:49]. It’svailable in mp3 but the best download is in lossless sound, as reviewed from a press preview, from Qobuz for the same price (£7.99). The contents of this self-recommending and highly enjoyable album are:

• St. Louis Blues [3:31]
• I Got Rhythm [2:59]
• I Found a New Baby [3:06]
• It Was So Beautiful [2:53];
• China Boy [3:04]
• Moonglow [3:04]
• Limehouse Blues [3:14]
• It Don’t Mean a Thing [3:06]
• Billets Doux [2:57]
• Swing from Paris [2:34]
• Them There Eyes [3:04]
• Three Little Words [2:55]
• Appel Direct [3:01]
• Swing 39 [3:20]
• Honeysuckle Rose [2:56]
• Night and Day [2:44]
• Only the classic parody of Nazi stormtroopers marching on a doctored film to the Lambeth Walk is more enjoyable than the performance of that work on the final track.

The 78s transfers have come up sounding very well.

Brian Wilson at MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL where you can read the full review

" The 1951 SULLIVAN concoction ballet Pineapple Poll, ... is especially delightful when performed by its begetter, Sir Charles Mackerras. Beulah have already reissued the Eastman Wind Ensemble recording of the suite but their new reissue is better still, especially when coupled as it is here with that other Mackerras confection, this time from VERDI, The Lady and the Fool. There’s a budget-price Classics for Pleasure coupling of both suites with Mackerras and the LPO, but the Beulah reissue on 1PS10 restores the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (1962, ADD/stereo) and the Philharmonia (1955 ADD/mono), both with Mackerras. It’s due for release in March 2017.

" This definitive account of Pineapple Poll when first released and again when reissued took a whole LP, as did The Lady and the Fool in 1956. With more generous selections than on the CFP album – the complete Lady, not just the suite – Beulah give us over 97 minutes. The 1962 recording has come up as fresh as paint and the 1955 is very good for its age, clear if a trifle dry and with a touch of end-of-side insecurity in the Epilogue. "

Brian Wilson at MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL where you can read the full review

"A more significant memorial to (Tibor) Paul’s work in Australia is a 1957 performance of Britten's Les Illuminations, in which the tenor soloist was Richard Lewis. The performance was given in Melbourne, with Paul conducting the Victoria Symphony Orchestra. The recording is clear but with some distortion on Lewis' heavier notes. Those who find Peter Pears' timbre too strangulated to compensate for his artistry will surely welcome Lewis’s fuller tone, though he, too, has a looser vibrato than one might wish. Paul conducts with a good deal of point. Since the tempi seem perfectly gauged to Lewis’s voice, and in the absence of any other recorded performance by Lewis, there is no reason to suppose that Paul had anything to do with the fact that this, at 25’ 09”, could be the slowest performance on record. The Pears/Britten takes 22’ 16”; Pears with Colin Davis live at the Concertgebouw in 1966 has a virtually identical timing. This may be a natural consequence of Lewis’s fuller timbre, though we can hear, as early as the violin solo that concludes “Fanfare”, that Paul was inclined to tweak the music towards Mahlerian post-romanticism. Despite Britten's later insistence that the cycle should be sung by a tenor – it was originally sung by the Swiss soprano Sophie Wyss – my own favourite is Suzanne Danco. Backed by Ernest Ansermet's magical, and unromantic, ear for texture, this 1953 Suisse Romande performance is a wonderful celebration of light and, incidentally, possibly the fastest ever, at 20’ 22”. Again, the tempi may be a consequence of a light vocal timbre and an easy technical fluency. There is no sense of hurry, any more than there is any sense of heaviness in the Lewis/Paul version."

Christophr Howell at Musicweb International