Walton - Hamlet, As You Like It | Chandos - Classics CHAN10436X

Walton - Hamlet, As You Like It

£7.13

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Label: Chandos - Classics

Cat No: CHAN10436X

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Soundtrack

Release Date: 30th July 2007

Contents

Works

Walton, William

As You Like It: A Poem for Orchestra after Shakespeare (arr. Christopher Palmer)
Hamlet: A Shakespeare Scenario (arr. Christopher Palmer)

Artists

Sir John Gielgud (narrator)
Catherine Bott (soprano)
Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Conductor

Sir Neville Marriner

Works

Walton, William

As You Like It: A Poem for Orchestra after Shakespeare (arr. Christopher Palmer)
Hamlet: A Shakespeare Scenario (arr. Christopher Palmer)

Artists

Sir John Gielgud (narrator)
Catherine Bott (soprano)
Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Conductor

Sir Neville Marriner

About

Featuring the riveting narration from Sir John Gielgud, this selection stands up to any current competition and makes an especially memorable recording, forming part of Chandos’s monumental recording project to make all of Sir William’s cinematic scores available on CD.
 
This Shakespearian collection was the catalyst in bringing the film music of Sir William Walton increasingly into the concert hall. Certainly by any standards Walton’s score for Hamlet – the second of the three films in which he collaborated with Sir Laurence Olivier – must be accorded a position of special reverence. The film won Olivier an Academy Award for Best Actor and Walton’s score was also nominated. The score was totally interlocked with the director’s perception of the play. It is brilliantly performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner and is the last of the Shakespearian triptych recorded by Chandos.
 
This suite from Hamlet was arranged by Christopher Palmer and the speeches performed by the legendary Shakespearean actor Sir John Gielgud. Sir John was already in his 80s when he made this recording but was still sprightly and interested in all around him, a real pro.
 
Hamlet is coupled here with the rarely available arrangement of As You Like it by Christopher Palmer which includes the setting of ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ with orchestra which was cut from the film and is sung here by Catherine Bott, a performance which Penguin Guide described as ‘radiant’.
 
This is re-issued by Chandos on its Classics label, re-mastered at 24-bit and repacked with a contemporary design and belongs on every collector’s shelf.
 
"Walton’s score for Hamlet offers some 40 minutes of music, a rich and colourful suite, superbly played and recorded, and much enhanced by the contribution of Sir John Gielgud in two of Hamlet’s soliloquies, ‘O that this too, too solid flesh’ and ‘To be or not to be’."  Penguin Guide

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