Ormandy returns with the Philadelphia Orchestra to provide a sumptuous offering of nearly an hour of music from Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty ballet that features many favourites (including mine, the "Panorama", taken fairly briskly yet retaining its elegant magic). The playing is exciting and the resonant acoustic brings warmth and sonic spectacle, but rather less in the way of subtlety: it is typical of the Philadelphia/ CBS recordings of the 1960s, but it's certainly very involving. The coupling is a similarly vivacious suite from the Rossini/Respighi La boutique fantasque, a scintillating score to which Ormandy does justice. Thanks to him one immediately notices the sparkling percussion condiment in the "Tarantella". Once more, good sound; resonant and spectacular, but not quite so opulent as in the Tchaikovsky selection. This is worth any collector's money.

-- Gramophone [3/1991]