Word: lps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week Billboard listed Capitol's Music for Lovers Only (produced by TV Funnyman Jackie Gleason) as No. 1 best-selling popular album, leading more sedately covered LPs by such favorites as Doris Day, Eddie Fisher, Eartha Kitt and Liberace. In general, sales of all the gaudily decorated albums are going strong. Record executives take satisfaction in the thought that they are just giving the public what it wants. "We try," says one, "to be sober-within reason...
...second year in a row, Columbia Records has dipped into the works of contemporary U.S. composers, filled six LPs with chamber music by a dozen of them. Columbia does not expect its Modern American Music Series to cause any stampedes at record counters, is issuing the series in a spirit of 1) adventure, and 2) duty to U.S. music. Nonetheless, a few of the scores in the new 1954 edition are first-class of their kind and well worth a hearing...
Gounod: Faust (Victoria de los Angeles, Nicolai Gedda, Boris Christoff; Chorus and Orchestra of L'Opera, Paris, conducted by Andre Cluytens; Victor, 4 LPs). The third "complete" version of this tinseled old warhorse, notable for the properly terrifying Mephistopheles of Basso Christoff and the limpid-voiced Marguerite of Soprano de los Angeles. Contains the usually omitted ballet music for the Walpurgis Night...
Puccini: Tosco (Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi; Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala conducted by Victor de Sabata; Angel, 2 LPs). The seventh complete version of Puccini's old pulse-bumper, and one of the best. The name part is sung fervently and in high style by Brooklyn-born Soprano Callas...
Other notable new records: all five of Beethoven's adult Piano Concertos, played by Wilhelm Kempff and the Berlin Philharmonic under Paul van Kempen (Decca, 3 LPs); all of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas, played by Jascha Heifetz (Victor 5 LPs); Ernest Bloch's String Quartet No. 2, played by the Musical Arts Quartet (Vanguard...