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" --Bill Holdship . Truthfully, Lerner and Loewe's musical score for this retelling of the King Arthur story doesn't measure up to My Fair Lady, which was still playing when Camelot opened on December 3, 1960. That being said, the three principals here were stronger musically than their 1968 film counterparts--Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet (who became a star as Lancelot, thanks to "If Ever I Would Leave You") could sing, while the pre-Liz Richard Burton could recite those great lines with Shakespearean flair, even if he never scored a hit with "MacArthur Park. For one brief, shining moment, there was a place known as Camelot--and this 1961 recording is the only document available of JFK's favorite musical, the one that's been used to describe his presidential administration ever sinceR... see description |
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Even today, the idiosyncratic interpretations and the eccentric personality of the "James Dean of the piano" exert a continuing fascination. Each of the 60 single and 9 double CDs consists of the exact recordings as first issued on vinyl and looks like a miniaturised form of the original disc: the CDs are in cardboard slipcases in the original design, and the CD itself is designed to look like a LP. In good time to commemorate the artist's birth 75 years ago on 25 September and his death 25 years ago on 4 October 2007, the Sony Classical label is launching a special project in honour of the double anniversary: "The Glenn Gould Complete Jacket Collection" transfers all the artist's recordings for LP on to 78 CDs, from Glenn Gould's legendary 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations to... see description |
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It's hard to believe that the CD was introduced in 1982 and it has taken 26 years for Eugene Ormandy to have a proper box set released by Sony/BMG of some of his magical Columbia/CBS stereo recordings. How do you choose 10 CDs of Ormandy's Philadelphia Orchestra recordings to include in a box set? He was music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1936 to 1980! His recordings ranged from the 78 era to the LP, stereophonic and up to the early 80's when he did digital recordings for CD. He created the standard for several eras of recording history in the 20th century. Many Americans grew to love and know classical music by hearing Eugene Ormandy and his Philadelphians over the years through his many recordings. I was one of them. As a teenager in the '60's many of my first LPs of... see description |
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Of the several "Original Jacket" boxes that Sony has been issuing for the past decade or so the new Itzhak Perlman and Jascha Heifetz sets are the only two serious disappointments. Not that there's anything wrong with the music or the performances, far from it. Rather it's that the "Original Jacket" principle has been badly violated in these releases. The purpose of this series is to produce collections of CDs that are faithful replicas of their original LP incarnations in such fundamental matters as cover art and repertoire content. This the Perlman and Heifetz boxes fail to do, the Heifetz being by far the worst (see my review). In this Perlman box many of the CDs include the LP cover more or less intact but there are some needless substitutions of repertoire among the CDs. In addition t... see description |
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