Elmer Bernstein - Movie Themes, Mood Music & More 1952-62 - Elmer Bernstein was a composer and conductor who became renowned for his work in films and TV, writing, scoring and recording some of the most renowned and recognisable themes in in Hollywood history. He is not related to the renowned composer of stage musicals Leonard Bernstein. Born in 1922, he served in the USAF in WWII, working in Armed Forces Radio, and came to the fore in the early 1950s when he started writing for movies. This 44-track 2-CD collection primarily features soundtrack and commercial recordings of themes and other music written for films and albums during the first decade of his career. In addition, it includes selected titles from his albums "Blues And Brass" for Decca and "Movie & TV Themes" on the Choreo label. It includes "The Man With the Golden Arm", "Staccato's Theme", "The Magnificent Seven", and "Walk On The Wild Side", plus themes from "The Ten Commandments", "The Comancheros", "To Kill A Mockingbird" and more. Although he composed for many different genres of film, his style was very distinctive, characterised by dramatic and atmospheric melodies and arrangements that invariably conjured up the mood and imagery of the subject. Comprising a selection of works from his early career, this collection offers an entertaining and evocative showcase for that style.

THE ROYAL EDITION - SHOSTAKOVI

"The Hindemith concerto, while not exactly revealing itself as an unregarded masterpiece, gets just the right degree of tempered bombast and pastoralism - suggesting that here is a piece ripe for reassessment."

-- BBC Music Magazine reviewing Sony 64507

"These two concertos are the product of Nielsen's last years: the Clarinet Concerto, surely one of his strangest and most powerful utterances, was written in 1929, only two years before his death, and the Flute Concerto comes from 1927. They are two of the most masterly concertos for their respective instruments (Nielsen whose understanding of the wind was second to none had planned a concerto for each of the wind family) and Robert Simpson rightly calls the Flute Concerto "the richest and most original" written for the instrument...Stanley Drucker gives an intelligent account of his demanding part...Julius Baker is the excellent soloist in the Flute Concerto which he plays with great virtuosity."

-- Gramophone Reviewing original LP, CBS 72639

THE ROYAL EDITION - SCHUMANN:

THE ROYAL EDITION - STRAVINSKY

Teaming composers as disparate as Bloch, Foss and Ben-Haim on the basis of shared ethnicity seems a slightly dubious exercise. On the other hand, since these three performances may be considered definitive, this is a real opportunity to discover some worthwhile new music. Bloch's Sacred Service is perfectly approachable in idiom, although, in echoing 'colourful' scores like Schelomo rather than anything more astringent, Bloch does not avoid an impression of rhythmic squareness. Those familiar with the more avant-gardiste utterances of Lukas Foss will scarcely recognize the composer from his early Song of Songs, at last getting a proper UK release. The manner is postHindemith, pre-Bernstein; Tippettian pastoral, with an exotic element intensified here by the cosmopolitan delivery of Jeannie Tourel. The orchestral accompaniment is not technically beyond reproach but the playing has total conviction and Tourel's is a performance to treasure. Only the post-Stravinskian eclecticism of Ben Haim's Sweet Psalmist of Israel is a little hard to take over half an hour.

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

Includes work(s) by Richard Wagner (Composer). Conductor: Leonard Bernstein.

Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms, Concerto for Piano and Wind

Although there is no lack of drama, this reading is refreshingly unmannered and free from overstatement.

The Third was among the first and most successful of Bernstein's Mahler recordings. Leonard Bernstein's reading is refreshingly unmannered and free from overstatement. There is no lack of drama or tension in the long first movement: the inner movements are done with great charm and the second in particular is quite winning. Matha Lipton is occasionally a shade under the note in the fourth movement, "0 Mensch, 0 Mensch!" but her voice has excellent quality and she sings with great feeling. The singing of the boys' choir in the fifth movement is fresh and vigorous and only an occasional note of over-sweetness, not wholly unavoidable in this music, is found in the finale. Apart from one or two minor points of balance that are of small account, the recording is well engineered. The acoustic is warm and open, detail emerges clearly and the perspective is for the most part truthful. The surfaces are smooth. Strongly recommended.

-- Gramophone [6/1974, reviewing an LP reissue of the Mahler 3]

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - THE ROYAL

THE ROYAL EDITION - TCHAIKOVSK

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO 14

BERNSTEIN CENTURY - FOSS: TIME

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

This release combines a pair of Beethoven performances by conductor Leonard Bernstein, in his prime, with the New York Philharmonic; the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, was recorded in 1961, and the Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, in 1958. Both have been digitally remastered, and the earlier recording actually comes out a bit better; by 1961 Columbia's engineers had figured out how to use the backdrop of LP sound to accent orchestral strings, an effect difficult to reproduce on CD. Charismatic, gifted, and genre-crossing, Bernstein was on top of the American musical world during this period, and these recordings remained strong sellers for some years. Hearing them half a century on reminds listeners (or apprises them anew) of several things. The first is that the New York Philharmonic, though certainly more than competent, did not have a trademark strength like its chief competitors in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston. You hope for brilliance that is not there. But you're also reminded that Bernstein was a subtler conductor than he is sometimes given credit for being. His histrionic style on the podium belied a well-considered, detailed approach to these works, for which he was confronted by decades (or more) of established tradition. The Symphony No. 5 is broad rather than exceptionally violent, with a lovely free space for the oboe cadenza in the first movement; Bernstein has it expand beyond its structural significance into a moment of sudden and profound personal reflection in the midst of societal tumult. In the Symphony No. 7 Bernstein is deliberate and persistent in the first movement's slow introduction and never really turns up the voltage until the finale, which thus acquires its proper bacchanalian mood. As with other albums in this Sony reissue series, the CD version includes both photographic reproductions of the original artwork and booklet reprints of the jacket text, with added French and German translations.

-- James Manheim, AllMusic.com

...[I]n such a spirited reading [as this performance of the Prokofiev First] the parallels between the Prokofiev and the Bizet [Symphony in C] are very much highlighted: the 'classical' symphonies of Prokofiev's title—those, presumably, of Haydn and Mozart — seem comparatively remote. But for all their brilliance elsewhere the players manage to be sinuously winning enough in the Symphony's slow movement... [a performance] of the very first class.

-- Gramophone [5/1969, reviewing an LP release of the First Symphony]

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Bernstein gives a highly romantic version of the first movement... [I]t could hardly be better done... The playing throughout the whole symphony is in the highest class and the recording is of the same quality.

-- Gramophone [10/1967, reviewing the original LP release of the Fifth Symphony]

BERLITZ PASSPORT - THE MUSIC O

BERNSTEIN FAVORITES- TCHAIKOVS

BERLITZ PASSPORT - THE MUSIC O

BERNSTEIN FAVORITES- ORCHESTRA

BERNSTEIN CENTURY - MOZART: PI

Also available: Great Moments at Carnegie Hall

A 2-CD set of highlights of legendary live recordings from the RCA and Columbia Archives.

BERNSTEIN CENTURY - 20TH CENTU

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - THE ROYAL

This release under the title "American Masters 2" has Bernstein conducting works by three composers who influenced him during his college years at Harvard. Marc Blitzstein's 'Airborne Symphony' is a near-oratorio scored for orchestra, piano, chorus, vocal soloists, and narrator (in this recording, Orson Welles). The work was commissioned during World War II in 1943, and is divided into sections that begin with the "Theory of Flight" and follow the history of aircraft through the war itself. There are theatrical and humorous qualities, as in "Air Force: Ballad of Hurry Up" a sophisticated piece whose effect is simple. It is an interesting and likable work that Bernstein periodically rescued from obscurity, as in this 1966 recording.
Walter Piston's ballet, 'The Incredible Flutist' is one of his most popular works. The suite on this recording is brilliantly fun, but not without depth. It derives its energy from theatricality as well as complexity and lyricism.
The Prelude for Orchestra by Edward Hill is an American-style symphonic work, recalling in its partly tonal edge and style the better-known works of Samuel Barber. In the hands of Bernstein the piece is strong and complements this program of mid-twentieth century American Composers.