Track Listing

1. Carmen Ballet: Introduction
2. Carmen Ballet: Dance
3. Carmen Ballet: First Intermezzo
4. Carmen Ballet: Change Of The Guard
5. Carmen Ballet: Entrance Of Carmen And Habanera
6. Carmen Ballet: Scene
7. Carmen Ballet: Second Intermezzo
8. Carmen Ballet: Bolero
9. Carmen Ballet: Toreador
10. Carmen Ballet: Toreador And Carmen
11. Carmen Ballet: Adagio
12. Carmen Ballet: The Fortune Teller
13. Carmen Ballet: Finale
14. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Introduction And Night Watch
15. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Funeral March
16. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Flourish And Dance Music
17. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Hunting
18. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Actor's Pantomime
19. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Procession
20. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Musical Pantomime
21. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Feast
22. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Ophelia's Song
23. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Lullaby
24. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Requiem
25. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Tournament
26. Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': March Of Fortinbras
27. Carnaval Overture, Op. 45

Product Details

• Released on: 1999-01-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Dimensions: .22 pounds
• Running time: 68 minutes

Customer Reviews

splendid percussion and remarkable Carmen
Arthur Fiedler's recording of Shchedrin's Carmen Ballet is excellent in every way. The composer's imaginative rescoring of several sections of Bizet's opera for strings and percussion is a superb reorchestration exploiting a full range of percussion timbre that reveals an incredible array of views of the score that continually delight the listener. The Ballet, composed as a vehicle for his celebrated wife- prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, Maya Plisetskaya - is an extraordinary orchestration which invites the listener to explore new and very different colors with music originally scored for Bizet's classically constituted orchestra of the opera pit. While the disk also includes the Incidental Music to "Hamlet" by Shostakovich and Glazunov's Carnival Overture, it's the Shchedrin performance that makes the disk worth any price for the listener who values discovering new things in music well known in an earlier guise.

Snap, Crackle, Pop!
If you haven't ordered a High Performance CD, you're really missing out. This particular release for me falls below some of the others. But it's still fun. The main work, the ballet music based on "Carmen," is quite unusual. All of the familiar themes are there, but with a lot of bombastic percussive inflictions. There's some tinkering with some of the themes, and where you expect to hear them, but it's all part of the surprise of the recording. This is a fun CD for driving down the highway. There are a lot of bells and whistles, all in the Fiedlerian tradition. If that's what you like, you shant be disappointed. I also recommend the recording of "The Rite of Spring" (with Seiji Ozawa), and the Mahler CD. Each are part of the High Performance series and are very thrilling. There's also a High Performance recording with Eugene Ormandy and his Philadelphia Orchestra which, for me, sounds more like a run through than a high performance.