A glorious celebration of ‘the Dutch nightingale’: all of Elly Ameling’s song-recital albums for Philips are being released by Universal Music!

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognized with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire. It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

A glorious celebration of ‘the Dutch nightingale’: all of Elly Ameling’s song-recital albums for Philips are being released by Universal Music!

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognized with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire. It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

A glorious celebration of ‘the Dutch nightingale’: all of Elly Ameling’s song-recital albums for Philips are being released by Universal Music!

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognized with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire. It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

A glorious celebration of ‘the Dutch nightingale’: all of Elly Ameling’s song-recital albums for Philips are being released by Universal Music!

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognized with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire. It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

A glorious celebration of ‘the Dutch nightingale’: all of Elly Ameling’s song-recital albums for Philips are being released by Universal Music!

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognized with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire. It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

Purity and beauty of voice, lively characterization and the art that conceals art were the hallmarks of Ameling as a singer. She loved singing as a child, and studying languages as a teenager, and her singing radiated an inner warmth and intelligence throughout her career. That career began in earnest soon after she won a Dutch singing competition in 1956, when a recording was made of the ‘Laudate Dominum’ from Mozart’s Dominican Vespers, K. 321, issued by Philips on a 45rpm record and quickly forgotten. Only now has it been transferred to digital formats, from a rare copy of the disc in the collection of the Dutch writer René Seghers.

A glorious celebration of ‘the Dutch nightingale’: all of Elly Ameling’s song-recital albums for Philips are being released by Universal Music!

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognized with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire. It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

A glorious celebration of ‘the Dutch nightingale’: all of Elly Ameling’s song-recital albums for Philips are being released by Universal Music!

In a career that spanned 43 years, Elly Ameling recorded over 150 LPs and CDs, many of them recognized with an Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. She chose, from early on, to place art song at the heart of her repertoire. It is the full range of her mastery in this repertoire, from Monteverdi to Mahler, from Schubert to Cole Porter, which is celebrated in the present collection of her Philips and Decca recordings, issued to mark her 90th birthday.

Growing up in a music-loving home in Rotterdam – her father was a watchmaker – she took singing lessons with Jo Bollekamp, Sem Dresden and his wife Jacoba Dresden-Dhont, Bodi Rapp and Pierre Bernac in Paris. In the Netherlands, as a young singer, she made many appearances in oratorios and Bach passions. In 1956 she won 1st prize at the International Singing Competition in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and in 1958 1st prize at the Concours International de Musique in Geneva, both times with special distinction. Her large repertoire includes music from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.