The Happy Prince is a studio album by the New Zealand rock band The La De Das, released in June 1969. It was the third album from the group and is often cited as the first Australian and New Zealand concept album…
Jennifer Higdon is a masterful colorist whose music is immediately appealing, full of energy and dash, but also with lyrical movements that grab you and hold your interest with their variety and melodic freshness. She can be brassy and bold like William Schuman and lushly Romantic like Samuel Barber, to mention just two American predecessors her music calls to mind. She also has a strong profile of her own, as we hear in City Scapes, a musical portrait of Atlanta that captures the bustle of a metropolis on the move. It's centerpiece, "river sings a song to trees," is wonderfully paced and engrossing. Concerto for Orchestra is a grand workout for a virtuoso band, teeming with solo turns that can tax all but the best musicians, and passages that spotlight sections of the orchestra with opportunities to strut their stuff. It's a brilliant piece brilliantly played by the Atlantans. Add Telarc's usual terrific sound and this disc becomes a must for fans of accessible modern music.
Culled from New York Philharmonic broadcasts spanning 75 years, this remarkable 10-disc compilation testifies to the strong-willed yet chameleon-like orchestra's virtuosity and versatility under a diverse assemblage of podium personalities. Stylistically speaking, the earlier items are the most interesting, revealing, for instance, a more vibrant Otto Klemperer and freer Arturo Toscanini than their later commercial efforts sometimes suggest. Other artists are heard in repertoire which they otherwise didn't record: Fritz Reiner's Brahms 2nd, Leonard Bernstein's Berg and Webern, and a wrenching concert version of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle under Kubelík's direction, to name but a few. From program notes to transfer quality, not one stone is left unturned to ensure first-rate results.
Limited 96 CD set. Conductor, pianist, composer and media personality, André Previn excelled in a diversity of musical genres and idioms. A child prodigy in his native Berlin, he moved to the USA in 1939 and made his early career in Hollywood, winning four Academy Awards. His time as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (1968-1979) established him as a major interpreter of symphonic repertoire, particularly Russian, French and British music - "The very definition of good conducting," wrote Gramophone of his celebrated LSO version of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.