Fête à la Française

Eloquence is a series of classical recordings culled from the archives of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon and originating from Australia. One of the most critically-acclaimed of classical reissue series in the world today, the series presents music for the casual buyer as well as increasingly for the connoisseur. Recordings on the Eloquence series have received the highest international critical acclaim for imagination and inventiveness. Most of all, it is noted for the resurrection of numerous analogue recordings hitherto unreleased on CD. There are now nearly 1000 titles in the series and in 2011 the Penguin Guide to the 1000 Finest Classical Recordings selected over 40 titles from the Eloquence series. More than a dozen recordings have been awarded the coveted Penguin Guide Rosette . Several have been given a 10/10 rating on ClassicsToday.

Among the highlights of this series have been the systematic exploration of the Decca recordings of Ernest Ansermet, Zubin Mehta, Peter Maag, Josef Krips, Kirsten Flagstad, Istv¡n Kert©sz, Imogen Holst, Christopher Hogwood as well as such iconic ensembles as the Vienna Octet, the Fitzwilliam String Quartet and The Consort of Musicke. They have received the highest critical praise and most of them appearing on CD for the first time. In some cases Hogwood, Fitzwilliams, Consort of Musicke the artists have contributed introductory notes. Forthcoming is a survey of the Decca recordings of Alicia de Larrocha and the Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Lazar Berman and Irmgard Seefried.

The recorded legacy of Albert Wolff is one of the most sought-after by collectors. Of Dutch parentage but born in Paris, Wolff was something of a polymath: pianist, organist, conductor and composer with a long career in recording studios beginning in 1920. His first recordings for Decca, started in the summer of 1951.

This collection includes Wolff's much-praised versions of the Charpentier and Massenet picture-postcard suites as well as the thrilling music of Lalo's Redemption and the searing (and very rare) recordings of instrumental music from Massenet's Werther. The mono versions of the Franck and Lalo pieces were never published, so those 1956 recordings had to wait nearly twenty years for their eventual (stereo) publication on the Decca 'Eclipse' imprint in August 1975. - Decca