The Queen

The Queen Album is a solo cover album of the band Queen by Elaine Paige. It was released in 1988 and peaked at No. 51 in the UK in November 1988. This is the only album from Paige to be released on Siren Records and distributed by Virgin Records. The album was re-issued with different artwork on CD in 1990 on Virgin VIP by Virgin Records. This is the only Paige album compiled of songs written and recorded by one composer or group. The album is a covers album of ten songs previously recorded by the rock group Queen, a favourite of Paige. The selected songs are a combination of hits and lesser-known album tracks, taken from Queen's entire back catalogue.

As Queen's second live album, Live Magic might appear to be a bit unnecessary, but a closer look reveals that it's a better record than the previous Live Killers. Culled from a variety of dates from the 1986 Kind of Magic tour but concentrating on the final show at Knebworth, Live Magic captures Queen, and Freddie Mercury in particular, at the height of their powers…

Queen were straining at the boundaries of hard rock and heavy metal on Sheer Heart Attack, but they broke down all the barricades on A Night at the Opera, a self-consciously ridiculous and overblown hard rock masterpiece. Using the multi-layered guitars of its predecessor as a foundation, A Night at the Opera encompasses metal ("Death on Two Legs," "Sweet Lady"), pop (the lovely, shimmering "You're My Best Friend"), campy British music hall ("Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," "Seaside Rendezvous"), and mystical prog rock ("'39," "The Prophet's Song"), eventually bringing it all together on the pseudo-operatic "Bohemian Rhapsody."

This disc contains two works that have been newly recorded. And they are strange works indeed. During the late 1930s Prokofiev wrote three pieces based on works of Pushkin – incidental music for a production of Pushkin's play, Boris Godunov; incidental music for a stage production of his Eugene Onegin; and music for The Queen of Spades. The latter was never finished and never produced, largely because of a change in attitudes from Stalin's government about what art works should focus on. As for the 1950 oratorio 'On Guard for Peace', the less said the better. This is one of those god-awful patriotic oratorios that Stalin's apparatchiks ordered by the yard from the country's composers. This one extols Stalin and the Soviet state, and recalls the sacrifices of WWII. History notes and lyrics in Russian and English can be found in the booklet.

VA: A Garland for the Queen / Benjamin Britten: A.M.D.G / Sacred And Profane
Cambridge University Chamber Choir / Timothy Brown
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 232 MB | Full Artwork: 53 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Gamut Classics # GAMCD 529 | Country/Year: UK 1991
Genre: Classical | Style: Vocal, Sacred, Secular, Early 20th Century, Contemporary

Cambridge University Chamber Choir performs three twentieth-century English song cycles for mixed choir, including the rarely-recorded A Garland for the Queen. A Garland was composed to commemorate the Queen’s coronation in 1953 by a selection of the finest English composers including Finzi, Bliss, Bax, Tippett, Vaughan Williams, Howells and Ireland. The two works by Benjamin Britten, AMDG and Sacred and Profane, are virtuoso show pieces for mixed choir.