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Classical Beatles The Songs of Lennon & McCartney & George Harrison*
CD 1
1. Yesterday [2:31]
2. She’s Leaving Home [2:57]
3. A Hard Day’s Night [3:51]
4. Penny Lane [2:35]
5. All You Need is Love [3:36] 6. Hey Jude [3:11] 7. Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da [3:45]
8. Let it Be [5:27]
9. Girl [3:23]
10. Ticket to Ride [3:19]
11. Here Comes the Sun* [2:15]
12. Paperback Writer [2:49]
13. Honey Pie [2:37]
14. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer [2:38]
15. Lady Madonna [3:33]
16. Michelle [2:59]
17. Day Tripper [2:19]
18. Fool on the Hill [5:11]
19. Got to Get You into My Life [2:49] Beatle Cracker Suite(arr. Wilkinson)
20. I. From Me to You [1:06]
21. II. Can’t Buy Me Love [1:02]
22. III. She Loves You [1:01]
23. IV. Help! [1:17]
24. V. It’s For You [1:54]
25. VI. Ticket to Ride [1:16]
26. VII. All My Loving [3:09]
CD 2
1. For No One / Blackbird [4:33]
2. Eight Days a Week [2:08]
3. And I Love Her [2:55]
4. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds [2:27]
5. Eleanor Rigby [3:03]
6. A Hard Day’s Night [4:09]
7. Can’t Buy Me Love [1:13]
8. Here, There and Everywhere [3:15]
9. Fool on the Hill [4:53]
10. Yellow Submarine [1:44]
11. I Want to Hold Your Hand [1:53]
12. The Long and Winding Road [5:59]
13. Help! [2:28]
14. We Can Work it Out [2:01]
15. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away [4:09]
16. Back in the USSR [2:56] The Beatles Concerto (arr. Rutter)
17. I. Maestoso – Allegro moderato [8:03]
(She Loves You – Eleanor Rigby – Yesterday – All My Loving – Hey
Jude)
18. II. Andante espressivo [7:39]
(Here, There and Everywhere – Something*)
19. III. Presto [7:57]
(Can’t Buy Me Love – The Long and Winding Road)
The King’s
Singers (CD 1: 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 19; CD 2: 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 16);
Baroque Chamber Orchestra/Richard Edlinger (CD 1: 4, 12; CD 2: 2,
10, 14);
Manuel Barrueco (guitar) CD 1: 2 (with David Tannenbaum, guitar),
6; CD 2: 4, 8, 12)
Manuel Barrueco (guitar), London Symphony Orchestra/Jeremy Lubbock
(CD 1: 10; CD 2: 8, 12, 15)
Vienna Boys’ Choir, Instrumental Ensemble (CD 1: 5)
Lesley Garrett (soprano) , Zoe Mather (piano), Jonathan Harvey (oboe),
String Ensemble / Philip Ellis (CD 1: 8)
Lesley Garrett (soprano), Orchestra / Sir George Martin (CD 2: 1)
Kindred Spirits, City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra/Miriam Nemcova
(CD 1: 11)
Rostal & Schaefer (piano duo), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Orchestra/Ron Goodwin (CD 1: 14, 18; CD 2: 6, 17-19)
The Swingle Singers (CD 1: 15, 17; CD 2: 9)
Xuefei Yang (guitar) (CD 1: 16)
Arthur Wilkinson Orchestra (CD 1: 20-26)
rec. 1966 – 2007 EMI CLASSICS 2167842 [73:14 + 73:58]
It may sound irreverent but I have always preferred the Beatles
song book in sundry cover versions. I eventually bought a couple
of LP compilations with their best known songs in original recordings
but long before that, as early as the mid-1960s when they were
still active, I acquired several other versions, mostly instrumental.
I especially remember an orchestral version of Michelle
with the French conductor and arranger Paul Mauriat, whose gimmick
was a prominent harpsichord embedded in a lush string sound. It
wasn’t exactly a baroque style version, even though the harpsichord
leads the thoughts in that direction, but it seems that some of
their melodies sound quite comfortable in baroque garb. A decade
ago Naxos issued a disc entitled ‘Beatles go Baroque’ with 18th
century style arrangements by Peter Breiner.
On the present
highly entertaining compilation we are treated to five numbers
in the same pasticcio style. They are cleverly done and played
with no mean period bounce, even though they are performed
on modern instruments. Penny Lane (CD 1 tr. 4) is one
of the best, but also Paperback Writer is a winner
with its rustic Vivaldi in ¾-time seemingly drawn from some
hitherto unknown fifth season. We Can Work it Out is
a movement from a flute concerto.
There are other
pastiches as well. Arthur Wilkinson compiled his highly inventive
Beatle Cracker Suite as early as 1966 and for some
reason set the seven short movements in accordance with Tchaikovsky’s
Nutcracker Suite. Can’t Buy Me Love, for instance,
is scored exactly à la Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy
and the whole suite is ideal for musical quizzes: Who wrote
this? Also the Rostal & Schaefer piano duo, in recordings
from 1979 with Ron Goodwin and the RLPO, are on imitative
mood. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer in a real knock-out version,
harks back on the early 20th century with some
Scott Joplin style piano and the typical tuba bass. Fool
on the Hill takes us to the cinema in a mix of Maurice
Jarre’s award-winning Doctor Zhivago and Michael Nyman’s
The Piano. The latter score was of course written almost
fifteen years after this arrangement, so the arranger, I suppose
‘Rutter’ stands for John Rutter, was undoubtedly far-seeing.
The eminent guitarist
Manuel Barrueco is frequently under fire on this set, as solo
player, as duettist and as soloist with orchestra and it is
of special interest to note that some of the arrangements
are by so prominent musicians as Takemitsu and Leo Brouwer.
The guitar solos are certainly among the finest interpretations
here, including also Xuefei Yang’s sensitive playing of Michelle.
Of the vocal contributions
Lesley Garrett is restrained and holds back her operatic voice
in two lyrical performances. The legendary Sir George Martin,
who produced practically all of the Beatles’ records, is arranger
as well as conductor of For No One / Blackbird. The
Vienna Boys’ Choir sing All You Need is Love with their
customary perfection and elegance but are perhaps too well-behaved.
Perfection and elegance but also thrusting intensity and rhythmic
vitality are the hallmarks of The Swingle Singers and I wouldn’t
have complained if they had been represented with another
couple of titles.
But those who
dominate the discs, quantitatively as well as qualitatively,
are the superior Kings’ Singers. They perform twelve songs
and each and everyone is a gem. They open the 2½ -hour traversal
of the Beatles Song Book with a marvellous Yesterday
and then follows a string of pearls, interspersed among the
other items. Let me just mention a few: The fine arrangement,
with a lovely introduction, of Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da –
what a swinger! Honey Pie, sung with eminent precision
and musicianship, catching to perfection the sweet humming-bird
sound of Disney. And on CD 2 impregnable versions of Eleanor
Rigby, Can’t Buy Me Love, I Want to Hold Your Hand and
Help! just to round off, before The Beatles Concerto,
with a lovely Georgia On My Mind. But that, surely
isn’t the Beatles, it’s Hoagy Carmichael! Easy! It’s just
the intro, then they seamlessly slides over to Back in
the USSR. Superb again!
The concerto,
a full-size piano concerto in three movements based on nine
Beatles songs, arranged by Rutter, is grandly romantic and
slightly overblown but superb of its kind. My wife and I had
a field-day when we sat through this comprehensive and truly
entertaining programme. To diehard Beatles fans I suppose
nothing but the original recordings with the four Liverpudlians
will do. But to those who love their music but are less enticed
by their performances the present compilation is a find. There
should be something for everyone here – except those with
long ears.
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