Word: rca
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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SHAKESPEARE: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (3 LPs; RCA Victor). In Shakespeare's funniest social comedy, everything depends on the speed and sparkle of the witty duels between Beatrice and Benedick, played here by two fast-rising British stars, Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens, whose voices are whirling kaleidoscopes. That young theatrical iconoclast, Franco Zeffirelli (creator of a successful beatnik Hamlet), directed this National Theater of Britain production, which one critic called as lurid and animated as a Superman comic. The performance on the recording is robust but never bumptious...
...STEVENSON WIT (RCA Victor) consists of excerpts from the speeches, press conferences and off-the-cuff remarks of the late ambassador, strung together with remarks by David Brinkley. Though Stevenson's wit was warm and enlightening, he was not a comic, and to isolate his jokes from the eloquent purposes they served does him no great service and gives the listener little sustenance...
JASCHA HEIFETZ grandly and brilliantly plays the third and biggest of Brahms's three romantic sonatas for violin and piano (reissued by RCA Victor). Such virtuosity would overshadow an ordinary pianist but not the late William Kapell, who with equal ease is first sensitive accompanist, then forceful protagonist. It was on his way to California to complete recording the Brahms triptych with Heifetz that the 31-year-old Kapell was killed in a plane crash twelve years...
...elder Fords were not overjoyed with the match, partly because Uzielli is a divorced man whose marriage has not yet been annulled. A modest civil ceremony was set for Dec. 28 in the Ford apartment, to be preceded by a big party the night before atop the RCA Building...
...CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER (RCA Victor). Sometimes listening to the album made from a musical is better than sitting through the show-but not this time. Alan Jay Lerner (who wrote the lyrics for the unforgettable My Fair Lady) and Burton Lane (who composed Finian's Rainbow's fine music) miss the Viennese schmaltz of a Hammerstein or a Loewe that would give these songs warmth. Even the soft-sharp voice of Barbara Harris cannot make up for the lack of feeling...