- Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow
- Doechii Alligator Bites Never Heal
- Neil Young Coastal Soundtrack [Indie Exclusive Clear LP]
- Childish Gambino Bando Stone and the New World [LP] [2 LP]
- Julien Baker & Torres Send A Prayer My Way [Indie Exclusive Cobalt Blue Vinyl]
- Falling In Reverse Just Like You (10 Year Anniversary Edition) - [Clear w/ Neon Pink Splatter LP]
- Miles Davis All Stars Walkin' (Original Jazz Classics Series) [180 Gram]
- Miles Davis Quartet Musings Of Miles (Original Jazz Classics Series)
- quickly, quickly I Heard That Noise [Mint Green Vinyl LP]
- Bad Nerves Still Nervous - [ Red/Black Splatter ]
- Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto Electric War [Bone Marble LP]
- Willow Avalon Southern Belle Raisin' Hell
- Beirut A Study of Losses [Transparent Blue 2LP]
- Bayker Blankenship Younger Years
- Ian Munsick Eagle Feather [Gold 2LP]
- Howie Jr.,John / Rosewood Bluff Return Of...
- Fontaines D.C. It's Amazing To Be Young / Before You I Just Forget
- Beachwood Sparks Dolphin Dance Remix
- Vial Loudmouth
- Haxkapell Om Jordens Blod Och Urgravens Grepp
- Index For Working Musik Which Direction Goes The Beam
- Tunde Adebimpe Thee Black Boltz [Colored Vinyl]
- Convenience Like Cartoon Vampires
- Divide & Dissolve Insatiable [Colored Vinyl]
- Hawkwind There Is No Space For Us
- Tony Holiday Keep Your Head Up - Red [Colored Vinyl] (Ofgv) (Red)
- Tony Kamel We're All Gonna Live
- Vicki Peterson / Cowsill,John Long After The Fire
- Taylor Rae The Void [LP]
- Superheaven Superheaven [LP indie exclusive Aqua]
- Painkiller Great God Plan
- Zorn, John The Bagatelles Vol.4- Ikue Mori
- Poison Idea Last Show In France (Burg) [Colored Vinyl]
- Kiefer Something For Real
- Kinsella & Pulse, Llc Open Ing Night [Colored Vinyl] (Crem) (Phot)
- Armagedda Ond Spiritism
This Week's New Releases
Music Releases 04-25-25
1931 was the breakthrough year for 32-year-old Hungarian immigrant Eugene Ormandy. First, he was engaged by the Philadelphia Orchestra to deputize for his idol Toscanini, who was briefly indisposed. Then, a few months later, he was asked to step in for the conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, also indisposed but in this case permanently. Soon Ormandy was hired to take over that rising Midwestern orchestra. At the end of his five-year tenure in Minneapolis, which produced a considerable discography for RCA Victor (available in an 11-CD Sony Classical box set), Ormandy was called back to Philadelphia, this time to become its co-conductor with Leopold Stokowski. In 1936, he began recording regularly for Victor with his new orchestra, picking up the pace in 1938 when he became its sole music director. Sony Classical is pleased to continue its comprehensive documentation of Eugene Ormandys discography with a new 21-CD release of everything he set down in Philadelphia before the ban on commercial recording instigated by the musicians union in 1942. By the time the strike ended in 1944, Ormandy and the orchestra had moved to Columbia Masterworks.
As connoisseurs have long known, these early Philadelphia albums are among the most impressive performances Ormandy set down in over 40 years at the orchestras helm. The first to be released fittingly enough for a Russian music specialist was Tchaikovskys Pathtique Symphony, recorded by Victor on December 13, 1936. That three-hour session in Philadelphias Academy of Music, the orchestras home, was the first of more than 400 led by Ormandy. And it was highly productive Ormandy had a reputation as a fast worker yielding not only the Tchaikovsky, but also two Bach arrangements by Lucien Cailliet, a Philadelphia Orchestra clarinetist and its staff arranger, the first three movements of Schumanns Second Symphony and, most importantly, Fritz Kreislers arrangement of Paganinis D major Violin Concerto, with Kreisler himself as soloist.
More Tchaikovsky followed during this early Victor stint: in 1941, Ormandy and the Philadelphians recorded the Fifth Symphony and the NutcrackerSuite. The latters matrices suffered from processing problems that rendered them too noisy to release until now. The orchestras contract, however, allowed them to re-make the recording for RCA in 1945, even though theyd already gone over to Columbia, and it has been possible to include both versions here.
Ormandy recorded Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition, one of his most celebrated interpretations, in 1937, but not in the familiar Ravel orchestration that he would always use later. Having just taken over as sole conductor of the orchestra after Stokowskis resignation, he wanted his own version of the Pictures, so he commissioned a new score from the orchestras house arranger, Lucien Cailliet.
The Philadelphia Orchestras most famous Russian connection was with Sergei Rachmaninoff, who premired a number of his works with them during Stokowskis tenure. When Ormandy assumed the music directorship, he was thrilled to continue the partnership especially as he had developed a friendship with the composer at his 1931 Minneapolis SO dbut concert, in which Rachmaninoff was the soloist. The partnership reached its height in late 1939 when Ormandy mounted a Rachmaninoff Festival at the Academy of Music and New Yorks Carnegie Hall to mark the 30th anniversary of his Philadelphia Orchestra dbut. They also took advantage of the opportunity to record three of Rachmaninoffs concertos for RCA, the First, Third and Fourth, legendary performances that have never been out of the catalogue and are, of course, reissued here.
At the Budapest Academy, Ormandy had studied the violin with a pupil of Brahmss great friend Joseph Joachim who also encouraged Ormandy as a child, so Brahmss music was in his blood from the beginning. As a conductor, Brahmss symphonies were at the core of his repertoire, and he gave more performances of them with the Philadelphia Orchestra than any other conductor in American musical history. He first recorded the Second with the Philadelphians anonymously for the Worlds Greatest Music series in March 1939, and nine months later conducted a tauter, official version for release on RCA. Both are included here along with Ormandys other recordings for Worlds Greatest Music, all made in 1938: the Mozart G minor, Beethovens Fifth, Schuberts Unfinished and the Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 2 and 3.
Two other famous Brahms recordings from 1939 are the Alto Rhapsody with Marian Anderson and the Double Concerto with Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Feuermann, about which Gramophones original reviewer wrote: Rarely can the powers of two string players have been so fully extended, so richly proved The whole thing is tremendous: a manifestation, for all who have an ear of the soul, of the composers greatness of heart and mind.
Soloists revered Ormandy throughout his career. Said Isaac Stern: There was not a single conductor who was a greater colleague in the making of a concerto record. In addition to the Brahms Double and the Paganini First Concerto with Kreisler, mentioned earlier, the new Sony collection reissues the Mendelssohn and Spohrs No. 8 with another famous violinist, Albert Spalding, and the Grieg Piano Concerto with Arthur Rubinstein: A glittering specimen and exuberantly played The best of the modern readings (Gramophone).
Sibelius was another leading composer Ormandy knew personally and performed regularly he also visited him in Finland and brought him to Philadelphia. For an album to mark the composers 75th birthday in 1940, he recorded three tone poems, while the next year saw a new recording of the First Symphony (Ormandys earlier one was made in Minneapolis in 1935), which he identified as the first of the masters symphonies I ever conducted. Two further versions would follow, in 1962 (for Columbia) and in 1978 (for RCA).
Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra were Victors chief Richard Strauss exponents during these years, making the first electrical recording of theSymphonia Domesticain 1938, followed in 1939 by Ein Heldenleben and in 1940 by Don Quixote,with Emanuel Feuermann. HindemithsMathis der MalerSymphony was still a new work when Ormandy recorded it in 1940, only six years after the composer introduced it with his own Berlin Philharmonic recording. Strauss family waltzes had already featured in Ormandys Minneapolis recordings. The three waltzes in this Philadelphia set earned praise from Gramophone in 1942: You will enjoy the brilliance of the combinations of tone, and their balance one of the exciting things about all the best American recordings Here is full-voiced tonal splendour.
American music was a prominent feature of this conductors repertoire he was always eager to promote the composers of his adopted homeland. Here we find the first recording of any work by Gian Carlo Menotti, his Amelia Goes to the Ball Overture, and the earliest recording of an orchestral work by Samuel Barber, his First Essay for Orchestra, as well as pieces by Roy Harris and two Sousa marches from the orchestras last session before the musicians strike shut down commercial recording for the next three years. But not before Ormandy and his Philadelphians had amassed the treasures brought together here for the first time.
Vinyl: $38.46 Buy
Miranda Lambert - Kerosene - Vinyl
Kerosene, the #1 debut studio album from Miranda Lambert, is celebrating its 20th anniversary with its first ever vinyl pressing. The platinum-certified album features the hit, "Kerosene," as well as fan favorites, "Me and Charlie Talking," "New Strings," and more.
Produced by Gene Walker and mixed by Andy Wallace and Dan Malsch, GHOSTs sixth psalm, Skelet, is its most unflinchingly introspective work to date. Where previous albums dealt largely with chronicling and/or observing outward facing subject mattersuch as IMPERAs meditations on the rise and fall of empires and its predecessor Prequelles evocations of the ravages of era-defining plaguesSkelets lyrics render the distinct individual emotional vistas of each of its 10 songs in one-on-one fashion, at times as if in a dialogue with oneself in a mirror. The end result is a singular collection of timeless, universal sentiments, all filtered through a prism of a uniquely personal point of view.
Side A
1. Peacefield
2. Lachryma
3. Satanized
4. Guiding Lights
5. De Profundis Borealis
Side B
1. Cenotaph
2. Missilia Amori
3. Marks Of The Evil One
4. Umbra
5. Excelsis
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- Car Seat Headrest Scholars
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- Haley Heynderickx Seed of a Seed [Indie Exclusive Foxglove LP]
- Lucius Lucius [Indie Exclusive Opaque Pink Vinyl]
- Pup Who Will Look After The Dogs [Purple Smoke/Orange/Pink Splatter LP]
- Lights A6 [Indie Exclusive Glow-In-The-Dark LP]
- Kany Garcia Garcia [Red Translucent vinyl]
- Pink Floyd Pink Floyd At Pompeii - MCMLXXII [2 LP]
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- Jenny Hval Iris Silver Mist [Colored Vinyl] (Wht) [Indie Exclusive]
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- Volcanic Tongue / Various Volcanic Tongue / Various
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- Ice (Lafayette Afro-Rock Band) Afro Agban
- Eli Winter Trick Of The Light [Clear Vinyl] (Red)
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- Grachan Moncur Iii Some Other Stuff [180 Gram]
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