Lerner and Loewe's elegant, indestructible musical is one of those rare Broadway triumphs to be transferred to the big screen with practically every note and lyric intact. Warner's plush film version also preserved for posterity the definitive performances of Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins (though Jack Warner originally wanted Cary Grant) and Stanley Holloway as Alfred Dolittle. But if the ...
Known affectionately as "Salford's answer to Pavarotti," UK classical music singer Russell Watson has proved adept at mixing up his classical repertoire with popular 20th century compositions. On previous albums, Watson has tackled songs by pop artists as diverse as Ultravox ("Vienna") Simon and Garfunkel ("Bridge Over Troubled Waters") and Freddie Mercury ("Barcelona"); but on That's Life ...
Andrea Bocelli's Sogno ("Dream") is a pop album of entirely original compositions that evoke traditional and modern influences. Bocelli himself describes the CD as secular Italian traditional melodic music with a contemporary twist. The album's 14 tracks include "The Prayer", a Bocelli and Celine Dion duet produced by David Foster; "Come un Fiume Tu", an intriguing collaboration with ...
The John Rutter Collection brings together 22 pieces by one of the most popular choral composers of our time, compiled from several discs already released on the Collegium Label. All performed by The Cambridge Singers, the choir which Rutter founded back in 1981, the tracks range from the joyous "Shepherd's pipe carol" of 1966 to the 1995 setting of Philip Sidney's poem "My true love hath ...
This is a super performance, slightly outside the common mould. In 1977, when this was recorded, Claudio Abbado was a great opera conductor, filled with sharp insights and a nice sense of the architecture of whole operas. He always seemed to know where he was going, and his ability to build to climaxes was second to none. Abbado has a rather elegant Carmen here in the smallish-voiced, ...