CD-Charts Position 1
Average Rating:

Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific (The New Broadway Cast)

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
from: SONY CLASSICS

Release Date May 27, 2008
Great purchase. Surely the most "complete" South Pacific I've ever come across. Kudos to the orchestra, who bring Rodgers score, with ample assistance from orchestrators Robert Russell Bennett and Trude Rittman, a freshness that is only improved by the clear digital sound. Emile is sung with exoticism and clarity, Nellie and Cable with youth and yearning. Well worth the eleven bucks. Even got me to write my first review.

CD-Charts Position 2
Average Rating:

Songs of Joy & Peace

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
by: Yo-Yo Ma

Release Date October 14, 2008
Great purchase. Surely the most "complete" South Pacific I've ever come across. Kudos to the orchestra, who bring Rodgers score, with ample assistance from orchestrators Robert Russell Bennett and Trude Rittman, a freshness that is only improved by the clear digital sound. Emile is sung with exoticism and clarity, Nellie and Cable with youth and yearning. Well worth the eleven bucks. Even got me to write my first review.

CD-Charts Position 3
Average Rating:

The Phantom of the Opera (2004 Movie Soundtrack)

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
by: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Richard Stilgoe, Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Charles Hart

Release Date November 23, 2004
I gave this as a gift to my younger sister, and she is thrilled. She deeply enjoys the rich music. USPS is the worst shipper possible, buyer beware! Overall worth a buy.

CD-Charts Position 4
Average Rating:

Mass

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
from: Sony

Release Date October 28, 1997
An excellent cd sung in english with a libretto to guide you. This two cd set is very much worth owning and is conducted by the composer. It is not like the usual mass in that it employs two orchestras, singers, dancers and two choruses.

CD-Charts Position 5
Average Rating:

Romance of the Violin

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
by: Claude Debussy, Fryderyk Chopin, Camille Saint-Saens, Franz Schubert, Vincenzo Bellini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Alexander Borodin, Antonin Dvorak, Claudio Monteverdi, Jules Massenet, Robert Schumann, Michael Stern, Craig Ogden, Gregory Knowles, John Constable, Jacob Heringman, Stephen Orton

Release Date October 28, 2003
ABOUT THE ALBUM: ROMANCE OF THE VIOLIN, 13 TRACKS, JOSHUA BELL, VIOLIN, CRAIG OGDEN, PIANO, GREGORY KNOWLES, FLUTE STEPHEN ORTON, OBOE JOHN CONSTABLBE, CLARINE ACADEMY OF ST. MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS, MICHAEL STERN, CONDUCTOR, Released 2003

The 13 pieces on this Joshua Bell album entitled "Romance Of The Violin" are from the 19th century's Romantic period, but the orchestra is the famed British ensemble St. Martin-in-the-Fields, better known for its Mozart repertoire when it was lead by its dynamic conductor Sir Neville Marriner in the 1980's. Here the conductor is Michael Stern and the orchestra's far from Mozartian in sound or Classical. Although it's clean, polished, and technically note-for-note accurate without any slips into romantic ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 6
Average Rating:

Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
from: Sony

Release Date June 06, 2006
Not exactly sure what I would do without these recordings. A world without Bach: a scary thought. My pulse slackens a bit each time I put these on. Relaxing, sure, but also tremendously moving. A perfect antidote for the trivial drone, distraction, and bustle of our post-capitalist world. No need to go buy new-age computer glitch world-music ambience; this is sonic therapy, written centuries before we needed it.

CD-Charts Position 7
Average Rating:

Avenue Q (2003 Original Broadway Cast)

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
by: Jeff Marx, Robert Lopez, John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Avenue Q

Release Date October 07, 2003
Avenue Q is hilarious. It's definitely deserving of it's praise. I saw it when it came into town. Definitely not for the kids, but neither are R rated movies.

CD-Charts Position 8
Average Rating:

My Fair Lady (1956 Original Broadway Cast)

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
by: Alan Jay Lerner, Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Frederick Loewe

Release Date May 28, 2002
In a watershed moment for Columbia Records, this original Broadway cast recording began the rapid climb of the company into the stratosphere of pop culture consciousness.

Produced by company president Goddard Lieberson, it sold five million copies and spent a staggering 480 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart. To place the album in an accurate historical perspective, it was the Thriller of its generation.

It is timeless music - due to the rich arrangements & performances - with the numbers encapsulating the musical for those who only have the album as the point of reference.

There are few albums that truly define the American music industry. This is certainly one which has space on that lofty mantel.

CD-Charts Position 9
Average Rating:

The Phantom of the Opera (The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
by: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Richard Stilgoe, Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Charles Hart

Release Date November 23, 2004
The music is very soothing and the soundtrack makes you think you are almost there. It is good to listen to and can relax you.

CD-Charts Position 10
Average Rating:

A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations (1955 & 1981)

CD-Charts > Music > The Sony BMG Masterworks Store
by: Johann Sebastian Bach, Glenn Gould, Tim Page

Release Date September 03, 2002
Most of us may remember the "perfect music forever" marketing that introduced CDs 25 years ago... those of us with working ears pretty quickly dismissed it for the hype it was... I've got both the '55 and '81 versions and now this release. I have NO regrets re the performance (of course) nor the sonics. My point is that I find it hard to believe that no one at what was then Columbia realized the analoge safety tape sounded so much better than the digital recording. More likely, someone did, but the idea of releasing a new Gould Goldberg, and in digital to boot, trumped releasing it in the "old," if albeit better-sounding analoge format. Not the first time commercial considerations clouded musical decisions. Still, a big "For Shame" in having us listen to the atrocious '81 ... Read More: