Product description

The Many Moods of Christmas (1963 RCA Victor Version) Robert Shaw Chorale and Orchestra

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Average customer rating: 4.5

Binding : Audio CD
EAN : 0090266880522
Label : RCA
Manufacturer : RCA
Publisher : RCA
Release date : 1997-06-17
Title : The Many Moods of Christmas (1963 RCA Victor Version) Robert Shaw Chorale and Orchestra
Original release date : 1962-01-01
Studio : RCA
MPN : 68805
Number of discs : 1

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-12-22 rating:

A Christmas Classic
This has been one of our favorite Christmas albums over the years. We recently performed these pieces as a part of our annual Christmas concert, and the response was overwhelming! People enjoy these renditions of traditional carols that are both classic and innovative. Robert Shaw was the greatest American choral conductor; Robert Russell Bennett was the arranger and orchestrator of some of the greatest broadway musicals including Oklahoma!, The King and I, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Camelot. Together they are a winning combination! Highly recommended.

review by: thisadonly date: 2008-12-18 rating:

A Huge Disappointment
There are two almost identical versions of "The Many Moods of Christmas" this is the first 1963 recording. There is a 1990 recording of the same material and arrangements on the Telarc label. I have to say I was looking forward to getting this original recording. I remember the vinyl as being quite good and many early analog recordings are spectacular. I suspect this was spectacular before the digital remastering engineers at BMG/RCA got a chance to "improve" it. The program is sadly compressed to death. The quiet parts are loud and the loud parts just get painful, shrill and unlistenable.

I also have the newer Telarc CD of the very same material. I know others have hinted that the original is better musically but I'd have to get a copy of the original on vinyl and haul out the old turntable to know. The dynamics are changed so radically on this remastering that there is no reason to buy it. Maybe one day the 1963 master tapes will be revisited by musical engineers and we'll all be able to hear the 1963 version as it was recorded with depth and musical dynamics. This CD is sad and I wish I could return it and not just throw it away.

review by: date: 2008-12-07 rating:

It will lift up your Spirit
I was stunned to find this Album still existed and had been re-mastered and transferred to CD, and that so few reviews had been written about it. I first heard this magnificent product - on vinyl - at the time of it's original release in 1961 ( there seems to be some confusion among Web-sites about when it was first produced, but I remember it being 1961). That particular year had been a difficult for me as a teenager so the Christmas holiday had held little interest - that is until Christmas Eve that year when I played this album. In an instant, with it's first chords, my inner darkness was wiped away and I was swept up in the grandeur of the moment. I would listen to the entire recording that evening in total, rapture. As with another Reviewer, from that day on my Christmas would begin and end with the playing of this wonderful "Present".

I still have that original Album (now safely stored away with a turntable to play it on), in the certain knowledge my children - and their children - will hear it again in all it's original majesty, and along with others I too have searched every Christmas for another album that might equal this - and have found none. Although technically oriented, I've avoided any attempts at comparison of vinyl vs. CD, or the RCA Symphonic vs. Atlanta.

All such attempts lose sight of what was sought and so masterfully achieved - creation of something that was meant to stir and lift up the very soul of the listener, and this it has done repeatedly through out my lifetime, as I hope it will yours.

review by: John B date: 2007-12-17 rating:

Still the BEST Christmas album after 45 years!
My father bought this LP when I was 15 and played it on his Heath Kit stereo. It wowed us then and it still does. I set up my old record player just to play this album this Christmas and it was worth it! I've bought a ton of Christmas albums over the years, trying in vain to find something as good as this. No go. This is a BIG orchestra with a BIG string section, with a BIG sound and a BIG organ, backed up by a BIG chorus. There are four passages that still bring tears to my eyes when I turn the volume way up which I always have to do. I just play them over an over. Just magnificent! Powerful! Lots of quiet passages but Shaw knows how to sneak into full tilt. This album is the antidote to weenie Christmas records by pop stars who can't really sing! I'm buying the CD to replace my skipping record because I cannot live without this album. If you're disappointed in this album you're from another planet. It DEFINES Christmas music.

review by: date: 2007-10-29 rating:

Still my favorite after all these years
I first heard this recording as a kid at a friend's house back in the 60's as we sat enjoying the changing colors of the light wheel on their aluminum Christmas tree. I was delighted to find it on cd a couple of years ago, and it is the first and last recording I listen to each Christmas season and will be for all my life. People who care about crystalline recording quality and digital perfection miss the point entrely. The arrangements are wonderful and the orchestra and chorus bring passion to their performances. Give me the spirit of this recording over the "perfection" of any other.

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