American Ballets (2009)

EMI Classics' American Ballets in its "American Classics" series is quite similar to a midline FDS package EMI marketed in 1997 that combined George Antheil's Capital of the World with William Schuman's Undertow and British-Italian composer Raffaello de Banfield's 1949 ballet Combat. However, in the American Classics issue it has jettisoned the foreign Banfield work and replaced it with Morton Gould's Fall River Legend; actually an improvement because the Gould work suits the others better. These were recorded between 1953 ... Read More

EMI Classics' American Ballets in its "American Classics" series is quite similar to a midline FDS package EMI marketed in 1997 that combined George Antheil's Capital of the World with William Schuman's Undertow and British-Italian composer Raffaello de Banfield's 1949 ballet Combat. However, in the American Classics issue it has jettisoned the foreign Banfield work and replaced it with Morton Gould's Fall River Legend; actually an improvement because the Gould work suits the others better. These were recorded between 1953 and 1955 by conductor Joseph Levine, who was at that time director of the American Ballet Theater, and this is the American Ballet Theater Orchestra although merely credited to "Ballet Theater Orchestra," as it did not yet have the "American" part of the name attached to it. A dramatic change in recording quality occurs between the Antheil, Schuman and the Gould work; the Gould is much clearer and richer than its slightly scrawny and gritty companions, and this is the result of... Read Less