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.

"Beulah already have several recordings of English Wind Band Classics (1PD82) and the military music of Sousa and other American composers to their credit (2PD82, 3PD82 and 4PD82 ) together with several single-work releases on Beulah Extra. The new release comes as a welcome addition to that repertoire. There’s a good mix of the familiar and unfamiliar – not everything comes from the Navy or Marines, despite the overall title – and the performances are about as good as they get, though Handel’s Where’er you walk comes over as a rather different beast than we are accustomed to at such a brisk pace – it’s all over in under three minutes. Everything has been well transferred. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"This is a worthy Reissue of the Month – well worth having for the powerful performance of the Rite of Spring alone. You can have the whole album with the equally fine performance of the best-known Shostakovich Quartet, with the Kurtz Symphony thrown in, a perky premiere recording. The Mercury recording of the Rite was well up to the high standard achieved by that label’s engineers and it has come up sounding fresh as paint again, as has the Shostakovich Quartet and even the Symphony sounds more like good early-LP vintage. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"I’ve already reviewed the Reiner recording of Morgenblätter (Morning Papers) – Beulah Extra 2BX176 – where you could easily think that Willi Boskovsky was conducting the Vienna Phil. Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses from the South) receives an equally fine performance, the recording, though released as long ago as 1955, still sounding fine in these transfers. The other recordings were all made with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, the workaday equivalent of the Vienna Phil, though also with the music in their blood. The pick of these were recorded with them by Jascha Horenstein and once available in CD transfers from Chesky, of which only one volume remains available. As that CD doesn’t include any of the four items on Beulah, their inclusion here is particularly commendable. I don’t recall encountering the other items, but they all receive enjoyable performances in recordings which have come up sounding well. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"There are more modern recordings of the Atterberg symphony but Beecham’s recording of the work soon after it won a prize offered by Columbia records is very special and the recording has come up unbelievably well for its age (1928)" Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"Beulah have already given us Tuxen’s recording of Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony, but the First doesn’t receive so many outings even now. I’m pleased that Beulah have given us the Tuxen live recording made shortly before his death in 1957. The sound is somewhat wiry but quite tolerable. The transfer of the Larsson Pastoralsvit (Pastoral Suite) faces competition from a Swedish Society CD of Westerberg’s later (1960) recording . Whichever recording you choose, it’s an attractive work by a composer of whose music I know too little. Not surprisingly the two performances are very similar and the 1952 recording has come up very well in this transfer. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

"George Weldon, whose performance of the Grieg Homage March opens the proceedings, was one of those conductors who seemed to be able to turn his hand to a wide range of music. He turns in a very respectable but hardly outstanding performance and the recording has come up well. Mengelberg’s Elegiac Memories which close the programme naturally sound more faded. They have already appeared separately on Beulah Extra 1BX243 in which form I reviewed them enjoying the way that Mengelberg prevents the emotion from getting out of hand. With the inclusion of music by Buxtehude – born in Denmark though his working life was spent just across the border in Lübeck – this album covers more ground chronologically than its predecessors. The Prelude and Fugue in g has already appeared on Beulah Extra 1BX267 and Psalm 113 on 2BX267. As I wrote, with soloists of the quality of Edith Mathis and Maria Friesenhausen, a consort of gambas, violone, theorbo and Walter Kraft (organ) the performances are still well worth hearing and the recording has mostly come up well, apart from a tendency for the pedal notes to thump somewhat in the Prelude and Fugue. Dag Wirén’s Serenade is a jaunty little piece, mined at various times for TV programmes. The same performers re-recorded it on a Decca EP c.1959 and I’m surprised that this was not preferred to the slightly muffled but acceptable mono version which Beulah have given us. Both Riisager’s 2-violin Sonata and the performers were new to me. It’s easy-going music, though not very memorable, and it receives a good performance, well recorded for the early-LP era. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

Downloads from Beulah Extra

	1st movement Andante 2nd movement Andante 3rd movement Largo 4th movement Bouree

"When these two recordings were reissued on Golden Guinea in 1967 the recording quality was panned by at least one reviewer, so I’m pleased to report that it has come up sounding well as transferred here, though the oboe tone is a trifle thin and rather too prominent. Golden Guineas were often plagued by surface noise and that’s absent, too. Styles of Handel performance have moved on considerably since 1958 and these are best regarded as mementos of how it used to be, though the oboe concerto is stylish for its time. The organ employed for Op.7/1 is too large-scale for the music – Beulah’s own reissue of the Op.4 set performed by Karl Richter (2-5BX198) reminds us that even in 1958 some organists knew how to keep their part in proportion. " Brian Wilson at Music Web International

	1st movement Allegro con spirito 2nd movement Andante 3rd movement Rondo
	1st movement Andante grazio 2nd movement Andante un poco 3rd movement Rondo
	1st movement Allegro 2nd movement Andante 3rd movement Rondo
	1st movement Allegro 2nd movement Andante 3rd movement Rondo

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