Stokowski, Scheherazade

This fabulous five disc set is replete with some of those old Stokowski warhorses all recorded in absolutely mind boggling Phase 4 sound, overblown perhaps but astounding for its time. Decca's remastering is absolutely magnificent and the discs are jam packed with almost six hours of music. This is another fine memorial to a great conductor who remained astonishingly vital until the very end of his life.

How do you describe Leopold Stokowski in one word? Showman, impresario, visionary, firebrand, agent provocateur, magician? Take your pick as he all that and more. It’s 40 years since the passing of one of the most colorful characters in Decca’s roster and one of the most indefatigable innovators in music performance history. His complete recordings for Decca/Phase 4 are presented together for the first time, with a bonus audio documentary featuring an interview with the maestro himself, in a handsome Limited Edition 23-CD boxed set.

How do you describe Leopold Stokowski in one word? Showman, impresario, visionary, firebrand, agent provocateur, magician? Take your pick as he all that and more. It’s 40 years since the passing of one of the most colorful characters in Decca’s roster and one of the most indefatigable innovators in music performance history. His complete recordings for Decca/Phase 4 are presented together for the first time, with a bonus audio documentary featuring an interview with the maestro himself, in a handsome Limited Edition 23-CD boxed set.

Decca/London introduced Phase 4 Stereo in 1961. For classical music, the Phase 4 approach was based on miking every orchestra section individually, along with mics for selected instruments – up to a maximum of 20 channels, which were then mixed via a recording console. This resulted in a dynamic, in your face sound with relatively little hall ambience. The quality of the sound mostly depended on how skillfully the recording engineer balanced each channel – and the results were not always consistent. Thus, the Phase 4 sound was the antithesis of the minimally miked, “simplicity is wisdom” approach of the RCA’s early Living Stereo and Mercury’s Living Presence recordings, along with Telarc’s early digital recordings.

Franklin Mint's "100 Greatest Recordings Of All Time" is a unique collection of the greatest performances ever recorded and has been awarded by respected members of an international music jury. The collection contains 100 records of excellent quality. Franklin Mint's "100 Greatest Recordings Of All Time" was named Best Personal Library of Recorded Music. Each recording has been selected by renowned music critics (Martin Bookspan, Schuyler G. Chapin, Franco Ferrara, Irving Kolodin, William Mann, R. Gallois Montbrun, Marcel Prawy, Andre Previn, William Schuman and H. H. Stuckenschmidt).

Franklin Mint's "100 Greatest Recordings Of All Time" is a unique collection of the greatest performances ever recorded and has been awarded by respected members of an international music jury. The collection contains 100 records of excellent quality. Franklin Mint's "100 Greatest Recordings Of All Time" was named Best Personal Library of Recorded Music. Each recording has been selected by renowned music critics (Martin Bookspan, Schuyler G. Chapin, Franco Ferrara, Irving Kolodin, William Mann, R. Gallois Montbrun, Marcel Prawy, Andre Previn, William Schuman and H. H. Stuckenschmidt).

Granting a long-held wish of many record collectors, Sony Classical is issuing the complete monaural American Columbia discography of Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in a vast box set of 120 CDs, all in new remasterings. Almost all of this material will be appearing for the first time on CD on Sony Classical. Indeed, 152 of these recordings have never been released at all on CD before now.

This twenty-year-old release comes from a time when Myung-whun Chung, a surprise appointment to the new Opera Bastille, suddenly emerged on DG as their leading French conductor. He comes from Korea's first family of classical music and was a gifted, prize-winning pianist before taking to the podium. It's very worthwhile to backtrack and find his early CDs - they are often of very high quality even if they have more or less sliped through the cracks.

On October 6, 1953, RCA held experimental stereophonic sessions in New York's Manhattan Center with Leopold Stokowski conducting a group of New York musicians in performances of Enesco's Roumanian Rhapsody No. 1 and the waltz from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. There were additional stereo tests in December, again in the Manhattan Center, this time with Pierre Monteux conducting members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In February 1954, RCA made its first commercial stereophonic recordings, taping the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, in a performance of The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz.