Maurice Keen Medeival

French pianist Monique Haas recorded the piano works of Debussy and Ravel twice, once in the late '50s and early '60s for Deutsche Grammophon and again in the late '60s and early '70s for Erato. The later recordings are released here in this six disc set from Warner Classics. As on the earlier set, Haas' performances are elegantly stylish, technically impeccable, consummately musical, and quintessentially French. Pick any piece by either composer at random, and you'll see. Try her bright but sensual Suite Bergamasque with its ravishing Clair de lune or her brilliant and visionary Études with their astounding concluding Pour les accords. Or try her recklessly virtuosic Gaspard de la nuit with its frightening Scarbo or her sweetly swaying Valses nobles et sentimentales with its heartrending Épilogue. There are only two meaningful differences between Haas' recordings: in the earlier performance, she is more passionate and impetuous while in the later performances she is more measured and thoughtful.

Maurice Jarre wrote the central musical motif of his score for Doctor Zhivago, "Lara's Theme," in a few minutes in a hotel, amid a frantic five-week rush to score the 197-minute movie. That theme made the Doctor Zhivago soundtrack album one of the biggest selling soundtrack of the 1960s, a considerable feat when one reckons in the competition from A Hard Day's Night, Never on Sunday, A Man and a Woman, Exodus, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The rest of Jarre's score is more in the realm of lushly textured Russian-themed mood music, filled with dark male choruses, folk and folk-like themes, and dense orchestrations, sort of faux-Tchaikovsky. The stereo separation is used to good effect, and the music as a whole forms a kind of romantic/exotic travelogue as much as a dramatic sketch of the movie's action.

This album already carries the intention in its title: "A Tribute to Bach" is meant to be a deep bow by the world-renowned recorder player Maurice Steger to the great master of the music world, Johann Sebastian Bach.

In 1977, Sir Lew Grade and acclaimed Italian director Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo And Juliet, the wonderful Mel Gibson Hamlet) were in the midst of finishing their sprawling six-hour miniseries about the life of Christ when they turned to veteran composer Maurice Jarre for the musical chores. While Jarre apparently had his reservations about doing work for television, in this case his fears turned out to be unjustified. With an all-star cast, exotic locations that spanned the globe, and most importantly the type of budget that could afford the kind of epic score Jarre had in mind, many still consider Jesus Of Nazareth to be one of the definitive filmic depictions of the J-man to date. Quite a feat, considering that the Guinness Book Of World Records calls Jesus the single most portrayed character in the history of cinema.