Who Was Ferdinand Mgellan

This is the second disc devoted by the Chinese-German Trio Parnassus to the chamber music of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the dedicatee of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. The prince was an aristocratic patron for whom the irascible Beethoven actually had musical respect, noting that he played not "in a princely or royal manner but rather like a competent piano player." Ferdinand, who was killed by Napoleon's troops in 1806, in turn venerated Beethoven, but the strongest tribute to his talent is that as a composer he wrote music that neither aped Beethoven's nor took refuge in Classical models.

Five Piano Concertos and the Piano Sonata No. 32, opus 111, recorded in stereo in 1962 and 1964, respectively, by Wilhelm Kempff [1895-1991] and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Ferdinand Leitner [1912-96]. The sonata, the composer’s last, is certainly more than a mere filler, from the opening hesitancy of the ‘Allegro con brio ed appassionato’ to the extended closing section of the second movement.

This exemplary four-disc box takes the high road, attempting nothing less than an honest reconstruction of the Who's stormy, adventurous, uneven pilgrimage. While offering an evenhanded cross-section of single hits and classic album tracks, 30 Years garnishes the expected high points with B-sides, alternate and live versions of familiar tracks, and the quartet's earliest singles as the High Numbers…

Let's call a spade a spade. Orion is an Elvis impersonator. No more, no less. That he's a good Elvis impersonator is important, since if he wasn't, Sun probably wouldn't have tried to promote his recordings as if they were genuine Elvis material, even going to the extremes of overdubbing Orion's voices on recordings by such Sun stalwarts as Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. This doesn't make him any better, but it sure makes him fascinating, particularly because he is gifted at mimicry and these are pretty good evocations of Elvis at his peak…