Almost one thousand miles east of Moscow, in the Russian city of Perm, the charismatic and provocative conductor Teodor Currentzis and MusicAeterna, the orchestra and choir he created, are recording Mozart’s Da Ponte operas. The first release of these three opera record- ings is Le Nozze di Figaro. These no-compromise studio recordings are the fruit of a unique way of living and work- ing which Currentzis has established in this remote, formerly closed city, which was dedicated to arms manufacturing in Soviet times.

The recording of Le Nozze di Figaro represents an unprecedented commitment by Currentzis and MusicAeterna in terms of preparation, session and postproduction time, to create the best possible sound. The recording embodies a radical new approach to orchestral virtuosity, score fidelity, vocal style and performance practice. Figaro was recorded over eleven straight days and nights for up to fourteen hours a day. Currentzis has tried to create an environment for those who search for what he calls “a real life in music.” His approach to the Mozart score is based on the conviction that it is virtually impossible today to hear it performed precisely and in full. His stated intention is to undo what he considers the effects of the 20th-century operatic tradition that is focused on simplification and vocal volume. For Currentzis, this recording represents the culmination of a decade-long research project dedicated to the discrepancies between the composer’s will and what our ears have become used to. Says Currentzis, “There are so many recordings which convey the general spirit of Mozart’s music. The only point in making a new one is to give the audience a chance to hear and learn about all the magic which this score holds.”

This 3-CD Deluxe Edition features a 300-page bound book that includes tracklist, full libretto and liner notes.
It is also available in a Super Deluxe Edition which includes everything from the Deluxe Edition plus a Blu-ray audio disc with the complete opera in high- resolution 5.1 surround audio.

This album of 11 tracks presents some of classical musics favorites, appropriately programmed to give children a healthy and exciting overview of some of the best music ever written. Favorites like Saint-Saen's The Swan, Mozart's Rondo alla turca, and Beethoven's Fur Elise will plant seeds into growing minds to continue to love classical music. Artists include Lang Lang, Placido Domingo, Jonas Kaufman, Joshua Bell, The cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic, and many more.

Opera News Review:

Like so many musical works that originated on the Broadway stage, Regina exists in several different versions. Basing his score and libretto on Lillian Hellman’s familiar play The Little Foxes, composer— librettist Marc Blitzstein created a hothouse musical melodrama that eventually, after many changes, found a home in the opera house. But with its tuneful, easily accessible score, its dance, jazz and folk elements and its abundance of spoken dial ogue, Regina resists easy classification, occupying a middle ground between opera and musical theater.
Regina has been treated best by New York City Opera, where two successful revivals, using the original 1949 Broadway sets, took place during the 1950s. This classic recording was made during the second of these revivals, in 1958. Although the version of the score used here differs substantially from both the Broadway original and the more complete recording conducted by John Mauceri in 1992, this remains an uncommonly satisfying souvenir of a great, neglected American opera. Blitzstein was very much a man of the theater, and the vibrancy of this work and this performance leap out at the listener across six decades.
Dramatic soprano Brenda Lewis had created the key supporting role of Birdie when Regina had its premiere on Broadway in 1949; at City Opera she assumed the title role and made it her own. She wields her gutsy, multi-hued voice to stunning effect, and she stints not one bit on delivering this character’s full quotient of vileness. Frequently descending into nasty chest tones and leaping up into blazing high notes, she creates a vocal aura that is rarely pretty yet always exciting. Bette Davis used the subtlety of screen technique to make her own Regina Giddens so effective; Lewis knew that in this vastly different arena she needed to pull out her full operatic arsenal. She delivers a thrilling performance.
Elizabeth Carron is a touching Birdie; she makes a fine, poignant moment of her “Lionnet, Lionnet” aria. As Regina’s daughter Zan, Helen Strine is clearly in vocal trouble. Although she acts the role well, her top is strident and beset by a wiry wobble, which threatens to destroy the sublime “Listen to the Rain” quartet. Carol Brice, as the maidservant Addie, brandishes the kind of authentic contralto sound we don’t hear much anymore. George Irving and Emile Renan etch sharp characterizations as Benjamin and Oscar Hubbard; so does Loren Driscoll as Oscar’s whiny son, Leo. Joshua Hecht is moving as the doomed Horace Giddens, though he drops the southern accent and reverts to pretentious mid-twentieth-century operatic diction during his sung passages.
Samuel Krachmalnick takes a very spirited approach to conducting the New York City Opera Orchestra and Chorus. This disc’s accompanying booklet contains brief informative articles by Frank Loesser, Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein; what it lacks is Blitzstein’s libretto. That’s a shame, because Blitzstein did not simply set Hellman’s play to music — he was a poet who adapted it into a true libretto.

Eric Myers, Opera News

Gramophone Magazine's 2016 Recording of the Year!

Following his landmark recordings, Beethoven – The Late Piano Sonatas, and Bach Partitas, both of which won international acclaim, on his new album, Bach-Beethoven-Rzewski, virtuoso pianist Igor Levit is now tackling the three greatest sets of keyboard variations. The new album features Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, long considered acid tests of the performer’s art, along with Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated, based on the Chilean revolutionary song ¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!, that has the reputation of being nearly unplayable. Bach-Beethoven-Rzewski will be released as a three-CD box set with a limited-edition slipcase.

The vaulting artistic ambitions of Russo-German pianist Igor Levit were already proclaimed by his first two albums. The response from the international media was as broad as it was universally ecstatic. Alex Ross of The New Yorker proclaimed, “After a few minutes, I was transfixed. He was playing with technical brilliance, tonal allure, intellectual drive and an elusive quality that the Germans indicate with the word Innigkeit, or inwardness.” Today, after a few years on the international scene, this young artist has emerged as one of the leading pianists of our time, combining supreme interpretative earnestness with sparkling technique and extraordinary versatility.

REVIEWS:

Igor Levit’s late Beethoven sonatas (11/13) and Bach Partitas (10/14) on Sony Classical have already made bold declarations of his pianistic and artistic prowess. Now he confirms his appetite for the big entrance with three monuments to variation form.

Certainly he can muster all the athleticism, velocity and finesse of a competition winner ready to burst on to the international scene. But like the rarest of that breed, his playing already has a far-seeing quality that raises him to the status of the thinking virtuoso.

Frederic Rzewski can hardly complain at daunting comparisons with Bach and

Beethoven, since his variation set The People United Will Never Be Defeated! so conspicuously invites them. Levit's recording comes with an wide range of color and attack, and an almost tangible sense of mission. Levit’s ‘Improvisation’ (an option allowed by the composer before the final reappearance of the theme) has a summative power that surpasses even Hamelin's.

Likewise, his Diabelli Variations features playing of unfailing concentration and insight. To say that Levit can withstand comparison with Kovacevich’s 1968 recording, as well as Anderszewski's and Schiff's, is the highest praise.

Levit’s Goldberg Variations range themselves more naturally alongside the patrician intelligence of a Perahia than with the sui generis extremes of a Glenn Gould.

Should a finer piano recording comes my way this year I shall be delighted, but frankly also astonished.

- Gramophone

After acclaimed accounts of Beethoven’s last sonatas and Bach’s partitas, Mr. Levit shows no sign of slowing down. In this smart set, Bach’s “Goldbergs,” Beethoven’s “Diabellis” and Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” become a triptych of three centuries of pianistic history: a total of 99 variations, each played with intellectual rigor and uncommon fire.

- New York Times

Soprano Aprile Millo's golden voice is in best form. This is another of those vintage Met ensembles vividly guided by Levine, with Vladimir Chernov especially affecting in the father-daughter duet.

– BBC Music Magazine

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the second solo album by exceptional young American organist, Cameron Carpenter, All You Need is Bach. Bach’s great keyboard masterpieces provide an ideal platform for Carpenter’s formidable creative gifts and the seemingly limitless possibilities of his dream instrument – his signature International Touring Organ. The album takes is cue from The Beatles’ classic “All You Need is Love”, where Bach’s Invention No. 8 in F major proudly rises out of the coda’s collage-like texture. Works include Contrapunctus IX from The Art of Fugue, Organ Sonatas in D minor and E-flat major, Prelude and Fugue in B minor, Invention No. 8 and, as the centerpiece, the great Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The latter holds a special place in Carpenter’s affections. “It is undoubtedly one of the Top 10 masterworks of all music, no matter how you evaluate it.”

A virtuoso composer-performer unique among organists, Cameron Carpenter’s approach is to smash the stereotypes of organists and organ music. Described as “extravagantly talented” (New York Times), and “smasher of cultural and classical music taboos,” (The New Yorker), Cameron is the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy Award® for his debut album, Revolutionary. All You Need is Bach is the second recording made on Cameron’s new International Touring Organ. The organ, designed by Cameron himself, is a mobile digital organ that is artistically and sonically equal to any of the world’s great organs and will challenge the way the world thinks about organs.

This 1999 recording of Marcello Viotti conducting La Favorite is the most recent of the reissued sets from Sony. This four act grand opera by Donizetti is based on the play Le comte de Comminges by Bacular d’Arnaud. The work which premiered in 1840 at the Academie Royale de Musique in Paris has a French libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaez. Ramon Vargas is a featured soloist, who has long been praised for his fluent, stylish arias. He meets the high range of these pieces with virtuosity. “(Marcello Viotti) gets the long lines of Donizetti’s melodies just right and holds the big ensembles together well. His Munich forces play and sing handsomely…” (ClassicsToday.com)

The night of Sunday, October 13, 1957, saw the first television production of a new musical version of the old Italian favorite, Pinocchio, starring Mickey Rooney and a host of brilliant performers. In the adaptation, told in songs, dance, and rhyming text, the old woodworker Gepetto once more fashions his own “little boy,” a long-nosed puppet whom he names Pinocchio. And once more the puppet goes through a series of amusing and fantastic adventures before he is magically transformed into a human being.

To portray Pinocchio, the talents of Mickey Rooney were engaged. Long a favorite of audiences everywhere, and most especially for his well-remembered portrait of another fictional hero, Andy Hardy, Mickey Rooney brought to the part his experience – virtually life-long – in song and dance presentations, together with his dramatic talents which were emphasized anew in recent television productions. Yasha Frank’s script presents him with manifold opportunities to demonstrate his versatility, and in his hands Pinocchio wins his humanity most engagingly and endearingly.

Decorating this production of Pinocchio throughout are the enchanting songs of Alec Wilder and William Engvick. Mr. Wilder, one of America’s foremost popular musicians, is famous for his unusually winning ballads, among them “So Peaceful in the Country,” “While We’re Young” and “Who Can I Turn To,” and for his more sophisticated compositions such as “Love Among the Very Young” and “The First Warm Day in May,” as well as his thoughtful and melodic instrumental works. He is well known, too, for the now-defunct Alec Wilder Octet, which made some memorable experiments in chamber jazz. William Engvick, the lyricist, has worked closely with Mr. Wilder before, as well as with many other major composers, has contributed lyrics for a substantial number of hit songs.

-- From the liner notes of the original LP release

Starring MICKEY ROONEY, FRAN ALLISON, JERRY COLONNA, STUBBY KAYE, MARTYN GREEN
Created and Staged by YASHA FRANK
Music by ALEC WILDER
Lyrics by WILLIAM ENGVICK

TRACKS
1 Opening / Listen to Your Heart - Fran Allison 2:56
2 Happy News - Stubby Kaye, Chorus 4:35
3 Pinocchio’s Song - Mickey Rooney, Gordon B. Clarke 3:25
4 Lullaby - Gordon B. Clarke, Chorus 8:11
5 The Fox’s Pitch - Martyn Green, Mickey Rooney 4:00
6 Listen to Your Heart - Fran Allison, Mickey Rooney, Chorus 5:10
7 The Jolly Coachman - Jerry Colonna, Mickey Rooney 2:59
8 Listen to Your Heart - Mickey Rooney, Chorus 3:34
9 Lullaby - Gordon B. Clarke 3:16
10 Listen to Your Heart - Mickey Rooney, Chorus 2:30
11 The Birthday Song - Ensemble 1:31
12 Listen to Your Heart - Fran Allison 1:38
13 Happy News - Stubby Kaye, Chorus 1:26

BEST OF PLÁCIDO DOMINGO

Curt Cacioppo: Italia

One of RCA’s great stars was the glamorous American soprano Anna Moffo, and one of her most celebrated Verdi roles is featured in this new release. From 1965, we have Moffo in the title role of Luisa Miller, “one of her best recordings” (MusicWeb International). The rest of the cast is no less distinguished: “Carlo Bergonzi is his usual, aristocratic self and also is in excellent voice. Cornell MacNeil is exactly right for Miller, the quintessential Verdi baritone role” (ClassicsToday).

Bette Davis was making a triumphant return to Broadway in the 1952 revue Two’s Company … until the show began its previews, when she promptly collapsed onstage on opening night. Davis was perhaps in over her head (song, dance and comedy were not her strong points) in this otherwise charming revue, with a score largely by Vernon Duke (music) and Sammy Cahn and Ogden Nash (lyrics). Two’s Company was one of the last of the sophisticated, satirical revues, a kind of show that television killed off, and its reputation has been held hostage to Davis’s troubled involvement. But Sheldon Harnick, Horton Foote and Peter DeVries were among those contributing material to the show, and the choreographer was no less than Jerome Robbins. Hiram Sherman won a Tony for his expert comedy work in this fascinating relic of Broadway’s past.

Music by VERNON DUKE
Lyrics by OGDEN NASH
Additional Lyrics by SAMMY CAHN
Musical Supervisor and Conductor: MILTON ROSENSTOCK
Production under the supervision of JOHN MURRAY ANDERSON

1. Overture 4:31
2. Theatre Is a Lady - Peter Kelley, Chorus 2:50
3. Turn Me Loose on Broadway - Bette Davis 2:24
4. It Just Occurred to Me - Peter Kelley, Deborah Remsen, Chorus 3:40
5. A Man’s Home Hiram Sherman 3:00 6. Roundabout - Ellen Hanley 3:18
7. Roll Along, Sadie - Bette Davis, Hiram Sherman, Chorus 4:49
8. Out of the Clear Blue Sky - Peter Kelley, Sue Hight 3:10
9. Esther - David Burns 2:28
10. Haunted Hot Spot - Ellen Hanley 2:51
11. Purple Rose - Bette Davis, Hiram Sherman, Chorus 6:00
12. Just Like a Man - Bette Davis 4:37
13. Finale - Bette Davis, Company 1:20

REVIEW:

The contents of this set are identical to RCA’s previous Previn RVW reissue, and the discs do not appear to have been remastered. André Previn’s Vaughan Williams symphony cycle arguably is the best such offering on the market today, particularly given the difficulty of finding the similarly fine Handley and Slatkin sets domestically (or at all!). In contrast to Boult’s famous EMI set, where his all-knowing conducting (he was a lifelong friend of the composer) occasionally takes on a relaxed and autumnal air, Previn’s consistently vibrant renditions reflect his fresh encounters with the music.

Not to say that he’s always faster–Boult is noticeably quicker in many instances–yet, especially in the case of Nos. 3 and 5, Previn sounds more energized and involved despite his slower tempos. Previn also has at his disposal the London Symphony, which provides exceptionally robust playing throughout. Case in point: compare the LSO’s playing in Previn’s potent and dramatic No. 6 with Boult’s generally listless London Philharmonic in the same work.

Previn’s gripping Sinfonia Antarctica and his profoundly atmospheric A London Symphony rank among the finest versions available. However, Previn must yield to Boult in A Sea Symphony, where Boult’s grandiose vision and EMI’s ravishing recording make a tremendous impression. RCA’s sound, except for a dry and edgy No. 8 (did the master tape deteriorate?) is generally clear and well-balanced, with plenty of impact. Factor in the bonus works–the Violin concerto “Concerto accademico”, the Tuba Concerto, and the “Three Portraits” from The England of Elizabeth–and you’ve got a handsome package of memorable, recommendable performances. The bargain price makes it all the more irresistible.

-- ClassicsToday (Victor Carr, Jr.)

Drawn from the worldwide holdings of Sony Classical Music and re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio, these smart, desirable and collectible EU (Germany) pressed import multi-disc editions, replete with legendary artists, offer many of the finest, most sought-after recordings in the classical discography. The slender, shelf-friendly box frontages feature large, prominently displayed photos of the edition’s featured artist, work listings at the back, with the CDs themselves housed in protective sleeves that divulge the recording specifics for each performance. Violin legend Jascha Heifetz “represented a potent manifestation of musical integrity combined with tonal and intonational purity, technical discipline, virtuosity and intellectual honesty,” declared Gramophone in a 1994 assessment of his achievement, “whether in unaccompanied Bach … or in the countless miniatures that he infused with a wealth of wit and feeling.” Now Sony Classical has compiled a special 5-CD box of Heifetz playing his “Favourite Encore and Recital Pieces”. It includes sonatas by Beethoven (the “Kreutzer”), Franck, Saint-Saëns and Richard Strauss, as well as Schubert’s C major Fantasy and movements from Bach’s E major Partita and his D minor Chaconne – plus the great violinist’s own captivating transcriptions of miniatures: selections from Porgy and Bess, Carnival of the Animals and pieces by Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev, Falla and Walton.

Anne Dudley is an English composer, keyboardist, conductor and pop musician. She was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in both the classical and pop genres, but she is perhaps best known as one of the core members of the synthpop band Art of Noise and as a film composer. Her soundtrack to the Phil Collins vehicle Buster won a Brit Award shortly after her out-coming as a composer. In 1998 Dudley won an Academy Award for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for “The Full Monty”. In addition to over twenty other film scores, in 2012 she served as music producer for the film version of “Les Misérables”, also acting as arranger and composing some new additional music.

By choosing to record classical repertoire with electric bass, including Bach’s Cello Suites, Jacques Bono has acquired a unique position in the music business. Playing them at their Thuringian church “original sites” put Bach's works into high contrast by interpreting them on an instrument of our times, more than 300 years after their composition – a project never ventured before. The time, the separation into musical genres and the familiar listening sensations are all overcome in Jacques Bono's performances. The cellist unperturbedly countered initial doubts by critics who claimed that it was impossible to perform Bach's cello suites on an electric bass with a musical venture that has music lovers of all origins intrigued – a revolutionary act in the best sense of musical tradition. In 2013 Jacques Bono had the idea of recording Bach’s 'Inventionen' in two voices together with a female violinist. On the German classical music scene he could not find a female violinist who would venture to play freely with him without fear of offending academically imposed values. He was thus delighted to find Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu in Los Angeles, who proved to be a violinist capable of playing J. B. Bach's music vivaciously, in a heart-felt manner and free of dogma.

Sony Classical presents “Ennio Morricone conducts Morricone – His Greatest Hits”, celebrating Morricone’s 60 years of music making in October. The album features his most popular movie themes, selected and conducted by Morricone himself. It contains music from films including "Once Upon a Time in the West", "Cinema Paradiso", "The Good The Bad And The Ugly", "The Mission". In 2016 and 2017 Morricone will present parts of this repertoire internationally on his "The 60 Years of Music Tour".

Written entirely for violin, orchestra, band and voices and inspired by the elements air, earth, fire and water, Nigel Kennedy’s Four Elements takes the listener on a multi-genre musical journey of exhilaration, contemplation and celebration. This work is a suite of pieces which Nigel originally conceived as his own 21st-century response to Vivaldi’s baroque masterpiece in the sense of creating programmatic, pictorial music based on an underlying theme. A notable new ingredient in the mix is the electronic drum programming by Damon Reece, who has worked with Massive Attack and Goldfrapp. Singers featured on the album include Zee Gachette and Xantoné Blaq, a former member of Amy Winehouse’s band.

BITTERSWEET

The legendary Broadway producer George Abbott once said that Ed Ames's voice was one of the finest he had heard on the legitimate stage. After success as a member of The Ames Brothers – the multi-platinum vocal quartet and popular TV fixture ­– Ames turned his attention to acting and a solo vocal career. His acting career took off as he landed roles in the Broadway production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the off-Broadway production of The Fantasticks and the role of "Mingo" in the TV series Daniel Boone. Opening Night, a collection of songs from Broadway musicals recorded in 1964 was his first solo recording and includes "Try to Remember" from The Fantasticks, his first charted single. Several years later, he followed up with the album More I Cannot Wish You, another collection of Broadway favorites that includes "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from The Sound of Music.

The Moravian Duets were the first works of Antonín Dvorák to bring him wide fame. Early in 1875, the composer chose four poems from a collection of Moravian national folk verse and set them to music in the form of duets for soprano and tenor. These were among Dvorák’s earliest attempts to infuse his music with the rising spirit of Czech nationalism, and were so successful that the following year, he composed another duet cycle of fourteen Moravian songs and, in 1877, a third set of four songs, both cycles being conceived for soprano and contralto.

Felix Mendelssohn composed more than seventy songs for solo voice, charming Lieder which often emphasized atmosphere rather than the explicit meaning of the poet’s lines. During the years 1836–1844, Mendelssohn composed his first of three groups of vocal duets with piano, Opus 63, which are recorded here for the first time. Three other duets were published posthumously as Opus 77, and his Drei Volkslieder completes the composer’s brief list of works in this genre.

Pablo Casals Six Songs for Soprano, recorded here for the first time, span a creative period of almost sixty-five years. n 1895, at the age of nineteen, Casals composed his “Cançó Catalana No. 1,” using as his text a poem by Jascinte Verdaguer, the foremost poet of Spain’s Catalan region and a close friend of the composer. “Cançó Catalana No. 2,” composed at about the same time as No. 1, has words by a contemporary of Verdaguer, the poet Apeles Mestres, also a friend of Casals. “De Cara al Mar” dates from 1935 and its text is by the twentieth-century Catalan poet Joan Llongueras. “Ballada de la Nova Solveig” is by another twentieth-century Catalan poet, Ventura Gasol. These poets also were friends of Casals.

Tomas Blanco and Rafael Montañez are Puerto Rican poets who came to know Casals after he took up residence in Puerto Rico in the late ’50’s. Casals’ set- ting of Blanco’s “Tres Estrofas de Amor” dates from 1958 and is dedicated to the composer’s wife Marta. “El Angel Travieso,” a setting of the poem by Rafael Montañez, was completed in 1959.

Founded in 1950 as a chamber-music workshop for professional musicians, the Marlboro Festival has attracted outstanding concert and chamber-music artists who have come to Vermont at their own expense to exchange musical ideas and to play chamber music. Away from the routine pressures of professional activity, they are free to explore the vast literature combining piano, strings, woodwinds, brass and voice, with concern only for the music itself. Weekend Festival concerts have been described by Time magazine as “the most exciting chamber music in the U.S.”

To describe Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica in all of its incredible detail would be the work of a graduate seminar in counterpoint. Busoni begins with a setting, divided into several variations, of the Lutheran chorale “Ehre sei Gott in der Ho?he” He goes on to develop, and eventually combine, all three of Bach’s subjects from the unfinished fugue. Then, after the connecting cadenza, he ventures beyond Bach’s original plan by writing a quadruple fugue that combines the chorale melody with the three original subjects. None of this, of course, need concern the general listener. It is enough that the Fantasia contrappuntistica is a work of exhilarating and beautiful power.

Reger was fond of the cello and wrote some of his best music for it. The Fourth Cello Sonata, Op. 116 (published in 1911), is an example of his mature cham- ber music style, and makes a better display of his undeniable powers than many of his more ambitious scores.

Founded in 1950 as a chamber music workshop for professional musicians, the Marlboro Festival has attracted outstanding concert and chamber music artists who have come to Vermont at their own expense to exchange musical ideas and to play chamber music. Away from the routine pressures of professional activity, they are free to explore the vast literature combining piano, strings, woodwinds, brass and voice, with concern only for the music itself. Weekend Festival concerts have been described by Time magazine as “the most exciting chamber music in the U.S.”

Long before Carrie Underwood in The Sound of Music, network television was regularly airing versions of Broadway musicals in the 1950's and '60s. Following his blazing introduction in Camelot, Robert Goulet had become one of the hottest actors of the time. Capitalizing on his fame, the ABC network showcased Goulet in live broadcasts of Brigadoon in 1966 and Kiss Me, Kate in 1968. Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon features Goulet with Peter Falk and Sally Ann Howes, and Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate stars his then-wife, Carol Lawrence, as well as Jessica Walter and Michael Callan.

Tracks:

KISS ME, KATE
1. Overture 2:42 - Orchestra
2. Another Op’nin’, Another Show 2:12 - Ensemble
3. Why Can’t You Behave 1:53 - Jessica Walter
4. Wunderbar 2:32 - Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence
5. So In Love 3:00 - Carol Lawrence
6.We Open in Venice 2:08 - Robert Goulet, Carol Lawrence, Jessica Walter, Michael Callan and Chorus
7. I Hate Men 2:18 - Carol Lawrence
8. I’ve Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua 2:14 - Robert Goulet
9. Tom, Dick or Harry 2:29 - Jessica Walter, Michael Callan, Tony Hendra and Nick Ullett
10. Were Thine That Special Face 2:34 - Robert Goulet
11. Too Darn Hot 2:27 - Michael Callan and Chorus
12. So Kiss Me, Kate 0:47 - Robert Goulet, Carol Lawrence and Chorus
13. Where Is the Life That Late I Led 4:17 - Robert Goulet
14. Always True to You in My Fashion 2:44 - Jessica Walter
15. So In Love (Reprise) 3:10 - Robert Goulet
16. Brush Up Your Shakespeare 2:46 - Jules Munshin and Marty Ingels
17. I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple 1:37 - Carol Lawrence
18. Finale 0:46 - Ensemble

BRIGADOON
19. Overture 4:05 - Orchestra
20.Brigadoon 1:44 - Chorus
21. Almost Like Being In Love 2:50 - Robert Goulet and Sally Ann Howes
22. McConnachy Square 1:58 - Marlyn Mason and Chorus
23. From This Day On 2:28 - Robert Goulet and Sally Ann Howes
24. Come to Me, Bend to Me 3:26 - Tommy Carlisle
25. The Heather on the Hill 4:24 - Robert Goulet and Sally Ann Howes
26. Waiting for My Dearie 1:46 - Sally Ann Howes
27. I’ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean 3:07 - Tommy Carlisle and Chorus
28. There But for You Go I 2:47 - Robert Goulet
29. Brigadoon (Reprise) 1:12 - Chorus

Arrigo Boito, Verdi’s greatest librettist, was also a noted composer, best known for his Italian operatic treatment of Goethe’s tragedy Faust. His Mefistofele is much closer in spirit and letter to the original source than Gounod’s French version of a decade or so earlier. Boito seems to have been more fascinated by Mephistopheles than by the title character (he also augmented the role of another famous villain, Iago, in adapting Shakespeare’s Othello for Verdi). There are numerous complete versions of recordings of Mefistofele on disc, but BBC Music Magazine gave its highest rating to this 1995 live recording from La Scala, conducted by Riccardo Muti: “It is Samuel Ramey who dominates this new recording. Ramey was already a splendid Mefistofele on a 1991 recording, but here he is even more in command of the role, and has the advantage of Muti’s masterly conducting. Michele Crider is an affecting Margherita and Vincenzo La Scola a mellifluous Faust.”

Money Monsteris an American thriller film that premiered in May of 2016. The film, directed by Jodie Foster and starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, is about a TV personality who is held hostage on his show by a viewer. The score for the film is by Los Angeles based composer Dominic Lewis. Lewis studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. While there, at age 22, he was given the opportunity to co-compose the score of “The Poet,” his first feature film. Lewis frequently works alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest composers, such as Hans Zimmer, Ramin Djawadi, and John Powell. He currently serves as resident composer at Zimmer’s renowned Remote Control Productions.