Extra Tracks

Below are tracks from our library that never made it onto one of our compact discs. They can be downloaded here as high quality 320kbs AAC encoded (MP3) files. Those originating on 78rpm discs are raw and no attempt to clean up the surface noise had been made although we have removed some loud cracks and bangs. Please note the previews are compressed files so the sound is not as good as that on the whole track.

Purchasers of tracks have unlimted personal use but must not pass or sell on to third parties nor broadcast without prior permission from PPL

Josef Traxel (1916 - 1975)

The German operatic tenor Josef Traxel was associated with Mozartian roles starting with his debut in Mainz, as Don Ottavio, in 1942, while on sick-leave from the army. He possessed a finely poised tenor voice with an unusually high tessitura.

Click on image for full size printable inlay image

"This is a fine Bruckner disc, and one which those who find Bruckner's symphonies interesting but too long-winded might well give a trial: both these works have a concision which Bruckner rarely attempted. The Mass in E minor (1866) is the second of the three masses which Bruckner wrote while he was organist at Linz Cathedral, shortly before leaving for Vienna to enter the lists as a symphonist. But whereas the other two are characteristically nineteenth century in their use of soloists, chorus and orchestra on a large scale, the E minor Mass is an unusual work for the period; it is a liturgical mass for choir and wind band, in which Bruckner looked back to the sixteenth-century style, fully integrated it into his own nineteenth-century idiom, and at the same time strangely anticipated the bare textures of our own time (there are some startling anticipations of the middleperiod Stravinsky). It is a work of touching beauty and grave power, which should appeal to anyone who loves noble choral music. The Te Deum is, of course, Bruckner's most famous religious work--a fierce affirmation of faith, for soloists, chorus, orchestra, and organ, which combines a stark grandeur with a deep emotionalism not far removed from Verdi's Requiem. The performances leave little to be desired : the chorus sings with a fine sense of the different styles needed for the two works, and the interpretation is suitably firm and strong in both cases, without any of the vagaries of tempo that so many con ductors inflict on Bruckner's music. The account of the Te Deum is preferable, I would say, to Bruno Walter's surprisingly frenetic rendering of the work, and even to Jochum's monumental interpretation (largely because the tone of Jochum's soprano and bass soloists is sadly focused)." D.C. writing in the Gramophone November 1962

Download the whole Mass for only GBP 2.00

Kyrie

Gloria

Credo

Sanctus, benedictus, agnus dei

Click on image for full size printable inlay image

More Beulah Extra tracks