The Concert Sound – HENRY MANCINI****

(Academy Award Selections) - Never On Sunday/High Noon/Over The Rainbow/Buttons & Bows/Love Is A Many Splendored Thing/Three Coins In The Fountain/Moon River (A Tribute To Victor Young) - Golden Earrings/When I Fall In Love/Sweet Sue Just You/Stella By Starlight/My Foolish Heart/Love Letters/Around The World In 80 Days (The Music Of David Rose) - American Hoe Down/Manhattan Square Dance/The Stripper/California Melodies/Dance Of The Spanish Onion/Our Waltz (Peter Gunn Meets Mr Lucky) - Mr Lucky/Lightly Latin/Dreamsville/Timothy/March Of The Cue Balls/Joanna/My Friend Andamo/Peter Gunn

Despite the title The Concert Sound was a studio recording based on Henry Mancini's orchestral US concert tour. It consists of medleys collected together under four separate themes. (US:15)

"The Concert Sound of Henry Mancini is not a live album. Mancini embarked on a national tour before the album was recorded, for which he wrote new arrangements of signature and popular tunes organized into thematic medleys. The concerts were well-received, but instead of releasing a live recording from the tour, Mancini assembled a 70-piece orchestra to perform selections from his concert repertoire on a Hollywood sound stage. The resulting album reproduces in part the content and arrangements from Mancini's live shows."

"The medley format is entertaining and fast-paced, particularly on the set of Academy Award-winning melodies, but the album's concept is of dubious merit."

"The sides are setup like concert medleys of movies and Broadway shows exactly like they would be in a concert. The arrangements are terrific and the sound is on a par with some of the best orchestras in the world. Mr. Mancini may be gone, but fortunately we still have his music."

"A touch of this, a splash of that, a tad of this. All combine to form The Concert Sound. Buy it, buy it, buy it."

"It was the combination of arrangements, the concert orchestra sound and the transitions between each piece. All of that, plus the overwhelming nostalgia of what that music meant when it represented themes for the period in which it and we were raised."

"Mancini literally wrote the textbook on composing scores for motion pictures, and his mastery of both composition and arrangement shines throughout this album."