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Prompt service, flawless condition, for my favorite arrangement of Christmas music by the great Robert Shaw.It's the meaning of Christmas for me.
Robert Shaw was the greatest American choral conductor; Robert Russell Bennett was the arranger and orchestrator of some of the greatest broadway musicals including Oklahoma., The King and I, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Camelot. People enjoy these renditions of traditional carols that are both classic and innovative. Highly recommended. This has been one of our favorite Christmas albums over the years. We recently performed these pieces as a part of our annual Christmas concert, and the response was overwhelming. Together they are a winning combination.
The quiet parts are loud and the loud parts just get painful, shrill and unlistenable. There is a 1990 recording of the same material and arrangements on the Telarc label. The program is sadly compressed to death. The dynamics are changed so radically on this remastering that there is no reason to buy it. Maybe one day the 1963 master tapes will be revisited by musical engineers and we'll all be able to hear the 1963 version as it was recorded with depth and musical dynamics. I have to say I was looking forward to getting this original recording. I suspect this was spectacular before the digital remastering engineers at BMG/RCA got a chance to "improve" it.
I also have the newer Telarc CD of the very same material. This CD is sad and I wish I could return it and not just throw it away. There are two almost identical versions of "The Many Moods of Christmas" this is the first 1963 recording. I remember the vinyl as being quite good and many early analog recordings are spectacular. I know others have hinted that the original is better musically but I'd have to get a copy of the original on vinyl and haul out the old turntable to know.
As with another Reviewer, from that day on my Christmas would begin and end with the playing of this wonderful "Present".I still have that original Album (now safely stored away with a turntable to play it on), in the certain knowledge my children - and their children - will hear it again in all it's original majesty, and along with others I too have searched every Christmas for another album that might equal this - and have found none. In an instant, with it's first chords, my inner darkness was wiped away and I was swept up in the grandeur of the moment. CD, or the RCA Symphonic vs. I first heard this magnificent product - on vinyl - at the time of it's original release in 1961 ( there seems to be some confusion among Web-sites about when it was first produced, but I remember it being 1961). All such attempts lose sight of what was sought and so masterfully achieved - creation of something that was meant to stir and lift up the very soul of the listener, and this it has done repeatedly through out my lifetime, as I hope it will yours. I would listen to the entire recording that evening in total, rapture.
Atlanta. I was stunned to find this Album still existed and had been re-mastered and transferred to CD, and that so few reviews had been written about it. That particular year had been a difficult for me as a teenager so the Christmas holiday had held little interest - that is until Christmas Eve that year when I played this album. Although technically oriented, I've avoided any attempts at comparison of vinyl vs.
I've bought a ton of Christmas albums over the years, trying in vain to find something as good as this. I just play them over an over. Powerful. There are four passages that still bring tears to my eyes when I turn the volume way up which I always have to do.
It DEFINES Christmas music. I'm buying the CD to replace my skipping record because I cannot live without this album. This album is the antidote to weenie Christmas records by pop stars who can't really sing. It wowed us then and it still does. I set up my old record player just to play this album this Christmas and it was worth it. This is a BIG orchestra with a BIG string section, with a BIG sound and a BIG organ, backed up by a BIG chorus. Just magnificent.
If you're disappointed in this album you're from another planet. My father bought this LP when I was 15 and played it on his Heath Kit stereo. No go. Lots of quiet passages but Shaw knows how to sneak into full tilt.
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