The Miracle 1959

Eugene Ormandy & The Philadelphia Orchestra - The Columbia Stereo Collection 1964-1983 [94CDs Box Set] (2024)
MP3 320 Kbps | Run Time: 03:14:07:35 | 11.7 Gb
Genre: Classical | Label: Sony Classical

This massive new reissue from Eugene Ormandy’s stereo discography collects all the Columbia Masterworks recordings he made in Philadelphia between the early 1960s and early 1980s. Sony Classical’s new 94-CD box set once again demonstrates what noted critic Jed Distler, reviewing the previous instalment of this ambitious project “The Columbia Stereo Collection 1958–1963” in Gramophone’s December 2023 issue, characterized as “the Philadelphia Orchestra’s brilliance and versatility as well as Ormandy’s unflappable consistency and habitually underestimated interpretative gifts”. Some of these performances – including the complete recording of Bach’s St. John Passion, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis, Schubert’s Sixth Symphony and a disc of opera choruses with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, as well as Ginastera’s Concerto for Strings and the ballet music from Massenet’s opera Le Cid – have never appeared before in the digital medium, and they shine a light into new corners of Ormandy’s astonishingly large repertoire.

Maria Callas in Concert: Hamburg 1959 & 1962
Italian | Subtitle: It/Fr/En/De | 1:58:42 | 720 x 576 | PAL | 4:3 | 25fps | MPEG-2 | LPCM | 48kHz | 4.3GB
Genre : Classical/Concert
Publisher: EMI

It is a pity that so few recordings of Maria Callas in concert exist to leave the testimony of this genius of the singing and actor's play that she was. Only 5 recitals have been filmed (Paris 1958, Hamburg 1959 and 1962, Covent Garden 1962 and 1964), recorded on 3 DVD.
2nd of the 3 posts.

The 1958 Hamburg concert finds Callas just one year before the loss of her voice and although her voice is not what it was in 1952 you can still hear the Vocal Miracle. The 1962 Hamburg concert finds Callas in a very tired voice but nevertheless exciting. Overall this one of the very few operatic visual documents of the Greatest Operatic Singer who ever lived!