Henry Purcell - Twelve Overtures

    Name a composer of Baroque Classical Music?  Sure, that's easy.  Bach, Pachelbel, Handel, Vivaldi.  But how about an English composer of Baroque Classical Music?  That's a bit tougher.  I can think of only one.  Henry Purcell.

    The title says it all - 12 Overtures written by Purcell in his prolific, but all too brief career.  He died at 35 or 36 years old  (1659-1695).  The tracks are performed by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, which was an offshoot of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and existed from 1968 until 1999, when it disbanded for lack of funding.  They put out a sh*tload of albums in their lifetime, including this one (MHS 4524, Musical Heritage Society), in 1980.  You can read all about them in Wikipedia.

- Tracks - (favorites in pink)

01. King Arthur - Overture : Act 1
02. King Arthur - Second Music
03. Dido and Aeneas -Overture
04. The Married Beau - Overture
05. Bonduca - Overture
06. The Fairy Queen - Sonata - Act IV

07. Timon of Athens - Overture to the Masque
08. The Rival Sisters - Overture
09. Abdelazer - Overture
10. The Old Bachelor - Overture
11. Distressed Innocence - Overture
12. The Indian Queen - Trumpet Overture

    I think I picked this LP up for free from the local used record shop as part of their "buy one of our rock-&-roll LP's, get one of these classical LP's that nobody wants for free" deals.  The disc was in average shape, with a bunch of scratches throughout both sides, and a positively nasty forward-skip in Track 06.

    It cleaned up fairly well.  You can still hear "hollow thuds" where a couple of the major scratches were.  And of course, there's nothing to do about the skip.

    I'm a sucker for Baroque music of any kind, so I naturally like this whole album.  Purcell was big into trumpet fanfares, and although most of these were written for plays by Purcell's contemporaries, nowadays they'd fit perfectly in some 1950's "Knights in Shining Armor" black-&-white action movies.

    All in all, a nice pick-up, although if you're not into Baroque, you may be yawning by Track 2.  A bunch of these are posted on YouTube, including the best of the bunch - The Fairy Queen.

Vivaldi - 4-LP Boxed Set (Time-Life)

    In the 1970's Time-Life Records put out a sh*tload of boxed sets of Classical music, generally grouped by composer.  Recently, a bunch of them showed up at my local used-book store, which also carries used records.  I picked up four of the sets - Franz Joseph Haydn, Antonin Dvorak, Richard Strauss, and this one, issued in 1978 - Antonio Vivaldi.

    There are 4 LP's in each set, and the bookstore was selling them for $3-$5, which is a fabulous price to pay for roughly 4 hours of music,  And owners of Classical records tend to take meticulous care of the discs.

- Tracks  (favorites in pink) -

Side 01 : L'Estro Armonico, Op. 3
(101) Concerto No. 10 in B Minor
(102) Concerto No. 11 in D Minor
(103) Concerto No. 1 (sic) in E

Side 02
(201) Sonata in C for Flute and Continuo, Op. 13, No. 5 (Il Pastor Fido)
(202) Sonata in C for Lute and Continuo

Side 03
(301) Credo
(302) Stabat Mater

Side 04
(401) Flute Concerto in A Minor
(402) Concerto in C for Two Trumpets
(403) Bassoon Concerto in F

Side 05
(501) Lute Concerto in D
(502) Concerto in G for Two Lutes

Side 06
(601) Beatus Vir

Side 07 & 08  :  The Four Seasons
(701) Concerto No. 1 in E  (Spring)
(702) Concerto No. 2 in G Minor  (Summer)
(801) Concerto No. 3 in F  (Autumn)
(802) Concerto No. 4 in F Minor  (Winter)

    The LP's were generally in good condition, so I de-scratched them manually.  Some were pristine; but a couple were in poorer shape and took some time.  Sides 03 and 06 are "church music", which means they are almost 100% choir-singing, and thus, although quite good, they are not to my taste.

    The Four Seasons are Vivaldi's most popular and well-known works, and deservedly so.  But  most of the concertos and sonatas were stellar too.

    You can find all of these on YouTube.  And FWIW, this is just a drop-in-the-ocean of Vivaldi's total library.  Per Wikipedia, he composed 500+ concertos, 46 operas, and 90 sonatas.

    Vivaldi's music here is full of life and quick in tempo.  I wouldn't play it while trying to go to sleep, but it does make for some great background music at work.

if they were alive today

    I'm not sure of (left to right) Number 1, but 2 thru 4 are Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.  I'd guess "Brahms" for the first one, to complete the "three great B's of Classical music", but he really doesn't look like the pics of Brahms at Wikipedia.

Tchaikovsky

    And a fantastic job he did with those cannons, I might add.

Age Of Revolution - Time-Life Series

    I picked this 4-LP boxed set up for $3.00 at the local Half-Price Bookstore.  This is an out-of-print 1966 Time-Life release; part of their Story of Great Music series.

    As noted in the lower-left corner, the music consists of works by Beethoven, Rossini, Schubert, and one Karl Maria von Weber, who, frankly, I had never heard of.  In addition to the music, there's a 60-page booklet giving the biographies of the four composers, and a 36-page "Listener's Guide", which you can memorize and impress your peers.

    That being said, Beethoven is clearly the dominant composer here - 5 album sides are devoted to his music.  Rossini gets one side ("The Barber of Seville"); Schubert 1½ sides; and poor Weber gets just about ½ side.

    If you're expecting "war" music (I was), you'll be disappointed.  The tie-in apparently is that all the music was written around the time of Napoleon, and that all the composers did some 'revolutionary' things to classical music.  In addition the three non-Beethovens apparently had contact with Ludwig himself, albeit sometimes in a very minor way.

-TRACKS -

01.) Leonore Overture No. 3 (Beethoven)
02.) Overture to "Der Freischutz" (Weber)
03.) Symphony No. 5 (Schubert)
04.) Songs from "Die Schone Mullerin" (Schubert)
05.) Piano Concerto No. 4 (Beethoven)
06.) Piano Sonata No. 27 (Beethoven)
07.) Selections from "The Barber of Seville" (Rossini)
08.) String Quartet No. 16 (Beethoven)
09.) Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven)

    The tracks are given in order, but some take up more than one side.  All of the selections are enjoyable, but none of them will make you gasp in awe.  Beethoven clearly outshines the others, but Weber was a pleasant surprise, and you'll laugh when Rossini's Barber of Seville starts up with the "Figaro" chorus.

    The discs themselves were in variable conditions.  Side 1-3 were almost pristine, but 4 and 5 had lots of scratches.  As usual, the de-popper scratch-removal program struggled with the scratches that were in the "low-volume" portions.  I had to amp up the volume of the "cleaned" music by about 30%.

    Time-Life numbered the discs so you could stack them on your 60's turntable and listen to sides 1-4, and then just flip them all over and listen to sides 5-8.  That's nice, but modern turntables (is that an oxymoron?) aren't stackable, and honestly, four straight hours of classical music is a bit much.

    At $3.00, this boxed set was a good deal, but I'll probably delete Tracks 04 and 07, which are from operas.  I prefer my Light Classical music without any singing.

Friday Funnies

    Indeed.  When have you ever seen Vivaldi worked into a cartoon?

Mendelssohn's Greatest Hits

Artist(s)  :  Various

Year  :  Unknown.  Probably late 60's.

Album Info  :  Columbia, Stereo, MS 7516

Tracks

01. Concerto in E Minor for Violin  (27:25)
02. On Wings of Song  (2:56)
03. Symphony No. 4 in A Major (IV - Saltarello : Presto)  (5:52)
04. Scherzo from Octet for Strings in E-Flat Major  (4:24)
05. May Breezes  (3:55)
06. Spinning Song  (1:34)
07. Spring Song  (2:23)
08. A Midsummer's Night Dream - Scherzo  (4:33)
09. A Midsummer's Night Dream - Wedding March  (4:56)

What's To Like...
    This was a freebie (buy one, get one free) from the local used-record store.   Like most Light Classical vinyl, it was in very good condition.  No skips, just a couple noticeable scratches, and the original plastic still covering the album.

    The "star" of this disc is Track 01, which is the entire first side.  Concerto in E Minor (Op. 64) is also known as Mendelssohn's "Violin Concerto" and is just a stunning effort.  It took Mendelssohn 6 years to compose it.  You can see a number of very good performances of it out on YouTube.  But here it is the incomparable Isaac Stern on violin, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.  And it is exquisite.

    The whole album is good though.  The most recognizable track is the "Wedding March" (Track 09), but frankly it is a bit lackluster compared to the rest of the selections.  The music is by several artists and orchestras - Andre Kostelanetz, Leonard Bernstein's New York Philharmonic, Rudolf Serkin, and Ormandy.

    Due to the excellent condition of the LP, the conversion to MP3's was uneventful, and I've been playing the sh*t out of it at work and on my MP3-player while reading at night.  The only downside is that the opening solo in the Violin Concerto (actually the motif for the song itself) is stuck in my head.  There are worse fates than that.

    Do yourself a favor and go YouTube "Mendelssohn Violin Concerto".  Felix Mendelssohn was a freakin' genius.  9 Stars (out of 10).

Festival of Light Classical Music

Absolutely the best collection of Light Classical Music of all time, it was released by Readers Digest in 1960 0r 1961. My Dad bought it, and I played it to death while everybody else was listening to some new group called The Beatles. You certainly got your money's worth too - each LP holds 45-50 minutes of music. . Somewhere along the line, it exited my folks' house - mosts likely when they no longer had a turntable. I can't see any chance of RD ever re-releasing it in CD form, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found the whole set (sans the box cover) at my local used-LP store. I was even more pleasantly surprised when they gave it to me for free. Because hey, it's a rock-&-roll store and no one would ever buy Light Classical LP's anymore, would they? . The records are in fair shape. No discernible warping, and only one skip so far after playing six of the LP's. But they are fraught with hissing and minor scratches, and that's the step in LP-to-CD conversion that chews up the man-hours. . So I was (again) pleasantly surprised last night when I came across a $20 software program last night that automatically removes hisses, scratches, and pops. I bought it, downloaded it, and tried it out this afternoon. I'd say it removes about 98% of the various types of noise, which is quite acceptable to me. It still takes about 2 hours to do a complete conversion, but that's child's play since I don't have to remove those scratches. W00t w00t!