NI 7718/9

Granados - Goyescas
Albeniz - Iberia

Enrique Granados and Isaac Albéniz, the two pre-eminent Spanish composers of their generation. They are also both chiefly known for a single piece of music - in Granados’s case, the Goyescas; in Albéniz’s, his collection Iberia.

NI 5738/40

J.S. Bach, The Works for Organ Volume XVII

The last ten years of his life saw Bach developing a private preoccupation with the technical and musical possibilities surrounding strict fugal and canonic polyphony. The publication of the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988, 1742), the Musical Offering (BWV 1079, 1747), and the canonic variations on Vom Himmel hoch (BWV 769, see Volume XI in this series), clearly reflect Bach’s increasing obsession with this type of composition. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to find that during the same period, Bach began another series of canons and fugues under the title The Art of Fugue ...

NI 7918

Mafalda Favero (1903 - 1981)

To a whole generation of record collectors outside Italy Mafalda Favero was Tito Schipa’s partner in the Cherry Duet from L’amico Fritz. She was, we all agreed, a very worthy partner, and we probably went as far as looking her up in the books, which placed her firmly in Milan (1928-1950) with plentiful appearances throughout Italy and excursions abroad. But she was certainly not the well-known figure she should have been. The reason, of course, is the Second World War. Favero was born in 1903 (earlier reference books give later dates), so that she had arrived at her mid-30s at the outbreak of war, which cut across her career just when it was beginning to fulfil its international promise ...

NI 7919/20

Gerhard Hüsch (1901-1984)

Hüsch is remembered now most widely as a singer of Schubert and Wolf. Certainly he was one of the best song-recitalists of his time. When the idea of subscribed ‘Society’ editions caught on in the 1930s, Hüsch and his regular accompanist Hans Udo Müller were the artists chosen to record Winterreise, Die schoene Müllerin, and Schumann’s Dichterliebe; and as the Hugo Wolf Society brought out its pioneering volumes of the Lieder, Hüsch remained among its most regular and valued contributors.