Suk / Dvořák / Janáček: Orchestral Works

Nimbus founder Numa Labinsky happened to hear William Boughton playing in 1982 and subsequently invited him to visit Nimbus. Labinsky had been checking the quality of the LPs passing through the factory. He was particularly taken with one of them: a recording of the newly formed Vivaldi Ensemble with William Boughton. A meeting was arranged, the discussions went very well, and the orchestra, now named the English String Orchestra, made its first recording for Nimbus on May 31, 1983. It was a potpourri with harpist Susan Drake entitled "Music for Harp and Strings." Unfortunately, this recording, a pioneering work of digital technology, is irreparably damaged.

Subsequently, two highly successful albums of English repertoire were recorded (Elgar on the one hand, and Butterworth and Parry on the other). The English String Orchestra's English recordings enjoyed great popularity, particularly with US radio stations. Therefore, it perhaps did not seem opportune to release these recordings of works by the Czech masters Josef Suk, Antonín Dvořák, and Leos Janáček that had been produced in the meantime. They were forgotten and only recently rediscovered in the archives. Now, with a delay of over 40 years, they are receiving their first release.