Cockaigne Overture ("In London Town"), concert overture for orchestra & organ, Op. 40
Following in the footsteps of Adrian Boult and Vernon Handley, two conductors praised for their authoritative recordings of Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Sakari Oramo achieves a similar greatness in his splendid reading with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, which has the added benefit of superb audiophile reproduction. Boult and Handley made their landmark recordings in the late 1970s, so they were working near the end of the analog era and were able to draw out wonderful sounding orchestral ...
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Following in the footsteps of Adrian Boult and Vernon Handley, two conductors praised for their authoritative recordings of Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Sakari Oramo achieves a similar greatness in his splendid reading with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, which has the added benefit of superb audiophile reproduction. Boult and Handley made their landmark recordings in the late 1970s, so they were working near the end of the analog era and were able to draw out wonderful sounding orchestral sonorities that were vividly captured in stereo sound. Oramo's interpretation is quite close to theirs in tempos and overall pacing, and anyone familiar with the earlier recordings will note that the timings of the movements are quite close. But this hybrid SACD has the advantage in listenability, due to the astonishing depth of the multichannel recording and the pristine DSD sound, which make this recording the clearest and most spacious of the three, and the easiest to use in following...
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