#1 Christmas Album
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Customer Reviews
THE BEST!!!
I am the proud owner of at least thirty Christmas CD's. This compilation is the best collection of quality music performed superbly that I have ever heard. I had to drive 1400 miles by myself before Christmas and I never tired of listening to this wonderful music. I also ordered several more copies of "#1 Christmas Album" to gift to family and friends who enjoy quality music.
A Christmas celebration for Classical Music Lovers only
The cover of this 2 disc set features half a dozen of the great voices of our time: Pavarotti, Domingo, Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Leontyne Price. However, selections by these soloists comprise only 2/5 of the set, the rest being choral and orchestral works.
Nor are these fabulous voices given equal representation. Pavarotti and my personal favorite, Joan Sutherland, have four songs apiece; Price and Kanawa have three apiece; Renata Tebaldi two and only one for Placido Domingo.
However, this is basically a very good collection. The first disc is a bit on the solemn side, while the second is brighter. Pavarotti leads off the entire collection with "Adeste Fideles" and returns later on the first disc with "Mille Cherubini in Coro". His renditions of "Panis Angelicus" and "Gesu Bambino" help grace the second CD.
Joan Sutherland brightens the first disc with her "Joy To The World" and then sets the lighter mood of the second disc with "Deck The Halls" and later returns with a sprightly "Twelve Days of Christmas". She also gives us the beautiful and tender "Virgin Slumber Song". Leontyne Price gives us Schubert's "Ave Maria", "O Tannenbaum" and "O Holy Night". Kiri Te Kanawa gives us Bach/Gounod's "Ave Maria", surprises us with "White Christmas" (a very beautiful & unique interpretation), and winds up the entire set with "Mary's Boy Child". Renata Tebaldi's contributions are Brahms' "Lullaby" and "Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle". Placido Domingo's sole appearance is with the dynamic "Hosanna in Excelsis" from Lloyd Weber's Requiem.
It is a splendid feast of vocal performances. However, the choral and orchestral selections have weak spots. I was especially disappointed in the Chicago Symphony & Chorus rendition of "For Unto Us a Child Is Born", and also thought that a good rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus would've worked better. The orchestral selections did have bright spots such as "Sleigh Ride" (Mozart's, not Leroy Anderson's), Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Snowflakes" from the Nutcracker, and the "Skater's Waltz".
All in all, this is a collection which belongs in your Christmas Classical collection, but can't be considered an absolute essential.
This may be a good album; the marketing ploy is shameless
I have not listened specifically to this edition, but I can tell you with near absolute certainty that this is a classic example of marketing at its most shameless. This is nothing more than a reissue of "The Greatest Christmas Show on Earth", but with a different title! (Something similar was done back in 1963, when the Harry Simeone Chorale's ever-popular 1958 LP, "Sing We Now of Christmas", was retitled and re-released as "The Little Drummer Boy"--its current CD title--, but at least the advertising there seemed slightly more honest.)
Everything on "The #1 Christmas Album" is exactly the same as on "The Greatest Christmas Show on Earth", right down to the order of the musical selections on the album. Only the cover design is different. Decca/London apparently believes that it can fool its customers into thinking that they are buying another album if they simply change the title. Of course, the album itself is reasonably good, though not on the level of most of my favorite Christmas albums, not even the now-deleted RCA Victor "Christmas Treasures", a collection culled from RCA Victor's Living Stereo series. The offense lies in the marketing gimmick,something I have never seen in all my years of avid CD buying. This is worse than all those "collections" which just rehash old material--at least each collection is a newly organized album.
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