Waxman is best known as a writer of film music, like Korngold. He was also a fine composer, again like Korngold, and in his threnody in memory of child holocaust victims, he composed a masterpiece. This work is roughly comparable in subject matter with Survivor from Warsaw, or the War Requiem, but is more accessible than the former and more sincere than the latter sounds (or so it seems to me). This is one of those odd masterpieces that should be well known but isn't. The recording is clear and immediate.
A 9CD collection entitled 'My Song' is the first and definitive Labi Siffre box-set and is released to celebrate 50 years of an outstanding musical career.A total of 146 recordings - compiled by Labi and including 44 bonus tracks - together with a 32-page picture booklet in which Labi speaks candidly about his career. This exclusive edition contains a photo personally signed by Labi Siffre, limited to Just 500 copies. Containing all of Labi's nine albums: Labi Siffre (1970) The Singer and The Song (1971) Crying Laughing Loving Lying (1972) For The Children (1973) Remember My Song (1975) Happy (1975) So Strong (1988) Man of Reason (1991) and The Last Songs (1998), all of which presented individually in its own CD wallet facsimile of the original album sleeve artwork.
A scant two years after they passed out of international copyright, the Czech Praga label re-coupled and re-released three of EMI's 1956 recordings of the music of Hungarian-American composer Ernö Dohnányi on this 2008 disc: his Variations on a Nursery Song and Second Piano Concerto with Adrian Boult leading the Royal Philharmonic and his Konzertstücke for cello and orchestra with Walter Süsskind leading the Philharmonia Orchestra. Janos Starker is the soloist in the latter work while the composer, a tremendously talented pianist, serves as the soloist in the former works. In all three cases, the performances are about as fine as one could possibly hope.