Word: lps
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...stepped onstage at the Academy of Music as his greatest thrill. After all these triumphant years, after all the honors and premieres and tours (including the first by a U.S. orchestra to Communist China), after making the Philadelphia probably the most recorded orchestra in history (many hundreds of LPs, three of which have topped sales of $1 million), he still looks back to that first encounter as "the most important moment in my life...
Marriner has been standing where he can be seen ever since. He has turned out an astonishing total of more than 200 LPs, most of them with the Academy, making him one of the most recorded maestros in history. And far from breaking down every few bars, he has built an international reputation for graceful, lively, intelligently shaped performances, especially of the Baroque composers and Mozart and Haydn. Though he continues to record with the Academy, he has long since ceased to appear regularly with it, having moved on to lead the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for ten years...
...first seasons, the group could scarcely fill a hall in New York. Now their annual schedule of 59 concerts includes 17 appearances in New York, all of them sold out. Their four LPs on Vanguard and Columbia, while hardly rivaling the Boston Pops, have broken out of the confines of the specialized early-music market. In addition, they are moving into national television. They have video-taped four 20-minute recitals of music by such contemporaries of Shakespeare's as Dowland, Byrd and Weelkes, for inclusion in PBS's Shakespeare series starting this month. "The potential audience...
Berlioz: Béatrice et Bénédict (Mezzo Janet Baker, Tenor Robert Tear, Soprano Christiane Eda-Pierre, John Alldis Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis conductor, Philips; 2 LPs). In his final work, the ailing Berlioz took Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and made it into his own Tempest, a blend of wit, ardor and gentle sadness bathed in the amber light of a late Parisian afternoon. The opera may be better heard than seen, since its extended passages of French dialogue make it problematical to stage; certainly it is a pleasure in this buoyant...
Mozart: Don Giovanni (Baritone Bernd Weikl and Bass-Baritone Gabriel Bacquier, Sopranos Margaret Price and Sylvia Sass, London Opera Chorus, London Philharmonic, Sir Georg Solti conductor, London; 4 LPs). "Summer lightning made audible" was Shaw's metaphor for this miraculous score, and it serves well to describe Solti's performance-swift, dramatic, deft. The tragic hints in the work are systematically underplayed; the elegant comic surface remains unbroken. Colin Davis' 1974 recording, with its darker moods and more muscular texture, still provides a compelling alternative reading. But the splendid cast and Solti's conducting make this...