CD-Charts Position 1
Average Rating:

UltraSound - Music for the Unborn Child

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: RCA

Release Date April 13, 1999
This product is wonderful and i would recommend it to anybody who is expecting a baby. It can be used also later on when the baby is born of course so it is a never-ending beautiful piece of music.

CD-Charts Position 2
Average Rating:

The Most Famous Opera Duets

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: EMI Classics

Release Date April 12, 1994
Maybe these don't represent absolutely the greatest duets in all opera. But they represent some awfully good ones! The CD begins with a duet from "Les Pecheurs des Perles" (Puccini) and ends with the gloomy Miserere (from "Il Trovatore," by Verdi). In between are many more operas, from Donizetti and Mozart to Strauss and Wagner. Some of the finer singers of the past half century appear in various of these duets.

A bit more detail on a handful of these to illustrate.

"Sull'aria" from Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro." Heather Harper and Judith Blegen sing the parts here. This is a sweet duet from the opera. The singer's voices meld well together and this represents a poignantly sung piece.

"Ah! Verrana a ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 3
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Puccini: Madama Butterfly (complete opera) with Maria Callas, Lucia Danieli, Nicolai Gedda, Herbert von Karajan, Chorus & Orchestra of La Scala, Milan

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: EMI Classics

Release Date August 19, 1997
While working on the PARALLEL PERSPECTIVES Archives page, I started thinking about Maria Callas & her rather bizarre, non-singing role in the equally bizarre 1970's Pier Passolini film MEDEA--and noticed this CD of Puccini's MADAMA BUTTERFLY. I must admit that I was kind of turned-off to see that the CD was remastered from the original non-sterophonic LP (there's just so much even digital technology can do in salvaging pre-stereo operatic recordings) and I really only purchased it because I was curious hear Callas in one of her less notable roles (unbelievably there were only 3 performances).

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself really enjoying the entire production.

Of course director Herbert Von Karajan is ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 4
Average Rating:

Mozart for Relaxation

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: RCA

Release Date March 09, 1999
A nice collection of Mozart arranged and performed as the title says - to relax.

It is not a definative collection as others have mentioned, but it the melodies are familiar and are things you know.

This leads to a good CD to put on, sit down and listen to with your eyes closed. One of the things I have been trying to do to help relax and calm down and I am very happy I bought this. I will be buying other titles in this series.

CD-Charts Position 5
Average Rating:

Lanza: Greatest Hits

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: RCA

Release Date April 11, 1995
The 4 stars are for the song selection, and not for Mario's Voice.
Mario Lanza voice will always be a 5 star.
There are great signers in this world, and he was one of them.
Bravo Mario.

CD-Charts Position 6
Average Rating:

The Complete EMI Recordings 1946-1984, Vol. 1: Orchestral [Box Set]

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: EMI Classics

Release Date April 01, 2008
Although it will take me weeks to finish listening to this set, I am very glad that EMI issued this set at such a low price. Many of these recordings are legendary, others are von Karajan's first recordings of symphonies that he would record again and again. While I have his complete Bruckner, Beethoven and Brahms on DG, in is interesting to hear his earlier thoughts--and they are often splendid.
I am not bothered by the mono recordings; they were produced by Walter Legge and are warmer than many a digital recording that I have purchased. Legge was initially opposed to stereo and lavished they same detail on his mono productions as on his later, stereo recordings.
What I have enjoyed most so far are some of the discs which were unavailable ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 7
Average Rating:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 / Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: Deutsche Grammophon

Release Date January 23, 1996
Previously, a reviewer wrote:

"Karajan in 1962 wanted to perform Beethoven in a modern way compared to the overtly spiritual, often very slow, heavy, and rubato-laden style of the past in Germany. ... in the last movement Karajan takes the vocal line faster...

"By comparison, Karajan wasn't as hectically fast or intense as Toscanini,..."

I don't wish to take anything away from Karajan's technical mastery, his orchestra's wonderful sound, or his "smoothness." It's all good.

But folks should understand the real reason Karajan's original recorded version of this work, at least in terms of its tempos, comes out as the previous reviewer accurately observed. He kept to his version in subsequent recordings, of which this ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 8
Average Rating:

Carl Orff: Carmina Burana

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: Deutsche Grammophon

Release Date May 14, 1996
I would like to clear up some confusion: THIS IS NOT THE RECORDED PERFORMANCE THAT CARL ORFF CONDONED!! Orff attended the rehearsals of Eugen Jochum's earlier **1953** mono recording of Carmina Burana and approved that final performance. That version is available on another DGG recording of all three pieces Orff wrote in a similar vein; the album is entitled "Trionfi". The 1953 recording presents a very different version than this stereo one that Jochum recorded 15 years later in 1968 AND WHICH ORFF DID NOT HEAR!! The earlier version is grittier, perhaps not as smoothly played or expertly sung, but altogether more primal and exciting. The early mono sound of that 1953 version is very good, easily the equal of the stereo sound except for the sound-stage, and the ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 9
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Mozart - Requiem / Augér, Bartoli, Cole, Pape, Wiener Phil., Solti

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: Decca

Release Date March 10, 1992
To my great surprise, in the last two decades of his life Solti turned into a marvelous Mozart interpreter. His '80's Figaro, and '90's Magic Flute and Cosi fan Tutte are among my favorite versions, Sir Georg's sometimes abrasive nervous energy (and scholarly use of reduced orchestral forces) makes for fantastically dramatic, anti-romantic readings. This requiem, recorded on the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death in St Stephen's cathedral in Vienna benefits from an awesome reverberant acoustic, a quartet of fabluous operatic singers (and let's face it, this is an opera manque, religiose, not religious, "the sickly sweets of operatic sin" as Stravinsky called it, and a good thing too I say). Excerpts of the actual Mass ceremony are interspersed, and along with the opening ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 10
Average Rating:

Christmas with Mario Lanza

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Composers- A-Z
from: RCA

Release Date October 25, 1990
the cd was great, also the custmer service sending the cd out right of way.