Literature 1988, Part 2

George Frideric Handel - Messiah
Robert Shaw Chorale and Orchestra / Robert Shaw
EAC+LOG+CUE | 2x CD, FLAC: 723 MB | Artwork: 35 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: RCA Red Seal # 082876-62317-2 | Country/Year: US 2004, 1966
Genre: Classical, Historical Recording | Style: Baroque, Oratorio, Sacred

Recorded in 1966, Robert Shaw's Grammy Award-winning performance of Handel's Messiah marks an important turning-point in this work's interpretation, clearly moving away from the ponderous, overly reverential style of early twentieth century renditions and pointing toward the leaner versions of the 1970s onwards, which follow Baroque-period practices. (…) Evenly divided between two discs, this recording of Messiah is complete, and it is preferred over RCA's 1992 excerpt album The Great Choruses from Messiah.

Few rock groups can claim to have broken so much new territory, and maintain such consistent brilliance on record, as the Velvet Underground during their brief lifespan…

John Ogdon was one of the great interpreters of Ferruccio Busoni's keyboard music in the first stage of its latter-day revival, and his EMI Angel recording of Busoni's Piano Concerto, Op. 39, can be said to have "made" that work as a viable, if impractical, concert staple. Between that triumph in 1967 and the recordings on Altarus' Busoni: Piano Works, made in 1988 – the last full year of Ogdon's short life – there were a host of detours and disappointments for the pianist. A nervous breakdown or two, long hospitalizations, longer absences from the concert stage, and a comeback received lukewarmly by critics were all hallmarks of a career that would have stopped lesser men cold.