The All Time Greatest Classical Album

June 30, 2008 | By Doug In Country |

The All Time Greatest Classical Album
Such a thing as the title promises isn’t possible, but even if it were, this wouldn’t be The All Time Greatest Classical Album. Rather, this is a set of 29 tracks offering 2-and-a-half hours of music drawn from the Sony and Columbia archives–a wide range of famous themes from the classics, plus some from the movies and stage. While John Williams’ Star Wars can be argued to be in the classical tradition, James Horner’s “Rose” from Titanic sounds very odd indeed following “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Equally, Sarah Brightman singing “Time to Say Goodbye” really has no place here, and while Jos? Carreras delivers a stirring account of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma!” the aria is unnaturally and very abruptly faded. What this set does deliver is a lot of very well-known music in good performances by major stars, among them Kiri Te Kanawa, Pl?cido Domingo and Jacqueline du Pr?. However, the documentation is so sparse as to not even credit the orchestras and conductors involved. Considering the many similar collections around, both The Best Classical Album in the World Ever and especially The A-Z of Classical Music offer better introductions to the classics. –Gary S. Dalkin

Customer Review: Mixed in every regard, but one to which I’m very grateful.
Some of everything makes an odd soup.
In this case, Nessum Dorma fades out as if it was badly cropped from a longer recording and there’s a cough in the middle of disc 1 track 12, but this double CD first introduced me to Sarah’s Intimate Version of “Con Te Partiro”, disc 2 track 1. You can get this on a Sarah Brightman CD instead. Just be sure it’s not the duet with Andrea B. No offence to him, but this one track is gorgeous as sung by just her.
There are good tracks to have on both discs, and at least two to avoid: Sony blasphemously make Fur Elise an orchestral piece, and it’s lousy, and there’s The Dance Of The Knights, which sounds like sweaty men in heavy armour leaping around indecently assaulting abused instruments with inappropraite bows and plectra.