Rostal & Schaefer / Ron Goodwin- The Beatles Concerto

This was $4 and purchased to offset some of the $1 crap I bought on the same day.  Got to try real hard to screw up the Beatles.  Not saying that hasn’t been done and posted on this webpage.  Just saying it does take some concentrated effort.

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Well, no trip to Phoenix is complete without some sporting event so Saturday night, the whole family went to a hockey game.  The Pittsburgh Penguins were playing the Coyotes.  Oddly enough, it was Larry Fitzgerald Bobble Head Night.  Great game.  Sidney Crosby was 2 points away from 1,000 so every time he touched the puck, you got excited.  Coyotes led for most of the game until the Penguins tied it up late in the third. The Coyotes then found themselves short handed in overtime but managed to hold Pittsburgh off long enough to score the game winner in the last minute of overtime.  Great game.

I learned last night that Concerto’s are meant to highlight a particular instrument. This piece of work show cases the piano talents of one Peter Rostal and John Shaffer as well as the writing/arrangements of John Rutter against the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra led by George Martin’s (who also produced the record)  buddy and first signing, Ron Goodwin(1925-2003).  Goodwin scored over 70 pieces of film, mostly UK releases including I’m Alright Jack.  He also scored Where Eagles Dare and Force Ten From Navarone. 

Released in 1979, this album contains one side consisting of three movements of the Beatles Concerto which had been performed worldwide since 1977.  The second side contains six Beatles impressions.  Both side are pretty good.  The concerto is a more complete work with elaborate orchestrations. The principles were trying to arrange and perform the Beatles’ work in a style of Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky. To this end, they were wildly successful as the work gained such comparisons instead of being a straight interpretation. The second side is also interesting as it takes Beatles songs and performs them in style similar to other composers.

I wanted to take samples from both sides to illustrate these things. From the first side, I leaned heavily towards the 3rd movement which puts “Can’t Buy Me Love” against a different background and marries it to “The Long And Winding Road”.  For the second side, I was really torn between  “A Hard Day’s Night” which wonderfully borrows from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, and “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” from which I should know by the now after doing this site, the style of which the music alludes to but don’t.  All I can say it that is a grandiose rendition.

Good album.  Satisfactory.

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