Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953)

The four coronations of the twentieth century were enormous and extravagant. Replete with festive pageantry, these ceremonies were joyful celebrations of British music, employing tremendous forces. Choirs from across London and beyond were marshalled to provide a chorus of over 400 voices; a full-size symphony orchestra was squeezed into Westminster Abbey, whilst bands of fanfare trumpeters led the pomp and celebration.

From the introductory notes by David Butchart: "In February 1954, as part of a promotional campaign, Deutsche Grammophon produced a now legendary 10-inch LP titled Musik … Sprache der Welt (Music - the Universal Language), that presented selections of its then current recordings. That LP, now a rare collector's item, consisted of extracts of works by the great composers. Each selection had a brief spoken introduction and was intended as a marketing tool for salesmen, to give - as Deutsche Grammophon wrote - "An impression of the breath and quality of our repertoire, a kind of calendar in sound". By reviving the title….we have developed this series to re-create the flavour and the spirit of those times at Deutshce Grammophon. The new 10-CD set of chronologically-ordered orchestral works - from Haydn to Bruckner - features familiar iconic recordings…"

André Cardinal Destouches (1672-1749) was educated by the Jesuits and had a career as a Musketeer before resigning to study music with André Campra. His first ‘hit’ was the pastoral Issé in 1697, which was written for the court but immediately taken up by the Opéra in Paris. He rose to prominent positions in both contexts and Sémiramis was first performed in 1718. Influenced by the Italophile Campra, Destouches abandoned the traditional five-part string scoring of Lully and his followers and created a work that was perhaps too serious for its time: only now are we in a position to recognise his work as an important step along the road from the aesthetic of Lully to that of Rameau.

"Delicado" (1953) presents love songs from South America, "Amour, Amor, Amore" (1955) presents love songs from the Continent, and together they prove that Percy Faith's music is romantic in any language!
Percy Faith was one of the most popular easy listening recording artists of the 1950s and '60s. Not only did he have a number of hit albums and singles under his own name, but Faith was responsible for arranging hits by Tony Bennett, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and Burl Ives, among others, as the musical director for Columbia Records in the '50s.