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Title: Erich Kunzel & The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Round-Up (features Frankie Laine) (1986) [Reissue 2006]
Genre: Soundtrack
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Cincinnati Pops is one of America’s favorite orchestras, playing classical hits, orchestral versions of pop and jazz, movie themes and show tunes… This rootin’-tootin’ salute to Westerns on TV and movie screens was the most popular demonstration disc at the 1987 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — and it’s easy to hear why. Before you can say Hopalong Cassidy, the disc opens with the stunningly reproduced stereophonic hooting of horses on the range, followed of course by a leisurely trot through the “Hi-O-Silver” section of Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture. Excerpts from Elmer Bernstein’s score for The Magnificent Seven — which contains probably his most memorable theme, along with a Copland pastiche — are given a spectacular arrangement by Christopher Palmer. The usual big-time Hollywood composers of the past, Alfred Newman (How the West Was Won), Dimitri Tiomkin (Gunfight at the OK Corral, High Noon), Franz Waxman (The Furies), and Jerome Moross (Big Country) show up — and collectively they prove that Westerns invariably brought out the best in their craft. A Palmer/Boston Pops-style medley of TV themes with gunfire punctuation turns up, as does a taste of the genuine article, Richard Hayman’s “Pops Hoedown” — complete with whoops from some hired hands on the recording stage. Why, even Frankie Laine, then 73, was lassoed out of semi-retirement in order to authentically resurrect “OK Corral,” “Rawhide,” and his big hit “High Noon.” Laine sounds pretty good, hamming it up in “Rawhide” and delivering “High Noon” in clipped phrases. The weight of Kunzel’s Cincinnati Pops enhances the stature of this music to no end — and Telarc’s pickup of the sound is as broad as a big screen and deep as a desert canyon. This is one of the best of Kunzel’s many discs, and it sounds as if he and the Pops are having a ball recording it.

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Title: Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra perform Music of The Beatles, feat. King’ Singers (2011)
Genre: Classical, Pop
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

From the moment Arthur Fiedler lifted his baton in 1964 to lead the Boston Pops in a wild, surprisingly effective arrangement of “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” symphony orchestras have tried to include Beatles music in their “pops” song bags. The trouble is, the Beatles’ brilliant original recordings are so indelibly embedded in our collective mental hard drives that they are a tough act to follow — despite the high quality of the songs on their own merits, despite the good intentions of those who pay them homage. So it is with Erich Kunzel, the Cincinnati Pops and the British early music/classical/pop vocal sextet The King’s Singers — an undoubtedly sincere labor that gets it all wrong. From this album, a visitor from Saturn would get the idea that the Beatles’ music was all about pretty tunes and satin-smooth harmonies. Yes, but … The orchestral arrangements — some of which are actually credited to Beatles producer and catalyst George Martin, others to in-house arranger Steven Reineke, Paul Hart and Andrew Pryce Jackman — may inflate the sound, yet they reduce the colossal impact and free-thinking guiding spirit of these songs to hum-along background music. The King’s Singers’ approach is, unfortunately, too prissy, too deliberately cute, too sentimental, or too impeccably smooth to do justice to any of them. There are two takes of “Eleanor Rigby that sum things up — an overweight one for orchestra that opens the album, the other an a cappella treatment by the King’s Singers — both of which miss the terse, emotional fervor of Martin’s string octet backing on the original Beatles record. Not even the sumptuous, deep, DSD-derived sound can save it.

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Title: Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra perform Music of The Beatles, feat. King’ Singers (2011)
Genre: Classical, Pop
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

From the moment Arthur Fiedler lifted his baton in 1964 to lead the Boston Pops in a wild, surprisingly effective arrangement of “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” symphony orchestras have tried to include Beatles music in their “pops” song bags. The trouble is, the Beatles’ brilliant original recordings are so indelibly embedded in our collective mental hard drives that they are a tough act to follow — despite the high quality of the songs on their own merits, despite the good intentions of those who pay them homage. So it is with Erich Kunzel, the Cincinnati Pops and the British early music/classical/pop vocal sextet The King’s Singers — an undoubtedly sincere labor that gets it all wrong. From this album, a visitor from Saturn would get the idea that the Beatles’ music was all about pretty tunes and satin-smooth harmonies. Yes, but … The orchestral arrangements — some of which are actually credited to Beatles producer and catalyst George Martin, others to in-house arranger Steven Reineke, Paul Hart and Andrew Pryce Jackman — may inflate the sound, yet they reduce the colossal impact and free-thinking guiding spirit of these songs to hum-along background music. The King’s Singers’ approach is, unfortunately, too prissy, too deliberately cute, too sentimental, or too impeccably smooth to do justice to any of them. There are two takes of “Eleanor Rigby that sum things up — an overweight one for orchestra that opens the album, the other an a cappella treatment by the King’s Singers — both of which miss the terse, emotional fervor of Martin’s string octet backing on the original Beatles record. Not even the sumptuous, deep, DSD-derived sound can save it.

hraudio | allmusic | discogs

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Title: Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Tchaikovsky: 1812 & Other Orchestral Works (2001) [Reissue 2003]
Genre: Classical
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

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Title: Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – On Broadway (1999)
Genre: Soundtrack
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Cincinnati Pops is one of America’s favorite orchestras, playing classical hits, orchestral versions of pop and jazz, movie themes and show tunes. On Broadway features Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra’s typically robust readings of favorites from the Great White Way: focusing primarily on latter-day stage hits, the collection includes rousing renditions of “He Lives in You,” “Seasons of Love,” “This Is the Moment,” “Cross the Line,” and “Hookers’ Ball. .

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Title: Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Mega Movies (2000) [Reissue 2006]
Genre: Soundtrack
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Cincinnati Pops is one of America’s favorite orchestras, playing classical hits, orchestral versions of pop and jazz, movie themes and show tunes. In the main, this is a collection of film music resembling others by Erich Kunzel and the indefatigable Cincinnati Pops, featuring short excerpts from film scores like those to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, The Rock, Godzilla, and Titanic. Kunzel’s performances are brisk, a bit subdued compared to those in the original films, technically faultless, and carefully consistent. Anyone who has enjoyed other Kunzel discs will enjoy this one, but this is a film-music disc with a difference: there are five tracks of sound effects included. These are quite short, but they’re well worth hearing. For one thing, they’ll give a full workout even to stereo equipment costing thousands of dollars. The booklet contains various disingenuous warnings about not turning up the volume too high while playing these, but they are in no way oversold. What’s remarkable about them is that for the most part they don’t rely on synthetic sound synthesis. The bee attack in The X-Files: The Movie was recorded by engineer Michael Bishop in a field, with six microphones placed at the entrances of a beehive. It’s uncanny. This may be the only audiophile album in existence whose credits thank a beekeepers’ association. The sound, auditioned on a good conventional stereo, is the main attraction here, and those with the equipment to take full advantage of the glories only hinted out by mere mortals among sound reproduction systems ought to be fully satisfied.

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Title: Erich Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Got Swing! (2003)
Genre: Jazz
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Cincinnati Pops is one of America’s favorite orchestras, playing classical hits, orchestral versions of pop and jazz, movie themes and show tunes… This is a good, solid pops recording; a disc that’s fun to hear. It’s not necessarily for hardcore jazzheads or swing dancers, but might be just the thing to introduce some of these classic tunes to folks who think they don’t like jazz. Most of these tracks don’t swing hard, but there are a few that even a dedicated dancer would want to try out.

Some real standards of the original swing era are presented here, hot and sweet. “Swingin’ at the Savoy” (this referring to the great Savoy Ballroom of Harlem), “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “Avalon,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and “Flying Home” (Lionel Hampton’s most famous creation) are just a few examples. Many of these songs have great stories behind their creation or earliest recordings. If you don’t love swing already, they’ll start you on your way. A few have been arranged until their original character is somewhat obscured (“Blues in the Night” now sounds like something from a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical); but the mix is excellent, and the musicians even better, whether the prevailing sound is pops-oriented or swinging. John Pizzarelli gives particularly standout performances on guitar and vocally. His clever manipulations of music and words mark some of the really swinging tracks. “Avalon” is a great hot take. Pizzarelli, son of jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, is in good company. Other guest artists include the vocalise group the Manhattan Transfer in various guises, from the ensemble to solo voice and rhythm section. Got Swing! is an excellent example of why pops orchestras continue to flourish (they’re just fun) and it’s liable to make the listener want to go out one night and see Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops live.

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Title: Erich Kunzel, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra – Vintage Cinema (2008)
Genre: Soundtrack
Format: MCH SACD ISO

This disc showcases developing musical styles used in films spanning nearly 30 years, beginning with Max Steiner’s theme to the original King Kong (1933) and moving on to merry old England for Eric Wolfgang Korngold’s theme to the spectacular 1938 film, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Alfred Hitchcock understood the vital role music plays in film. Miklós Rózsa’s suite from the 1945 thriller Spellbound captures the psychological suspense with the unique timbre of a theremin – Rózsa won his first Oscar for this score. Legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann’s overture to Hitchcock’s “wrong man” thriller, North by Northwest (1959) is next in the tracklist. Aaron Copland lent his considerable talents to Hollywood on several occasions, including the 1947 screen adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, selections from the folk-like score are included here. Two Oscar-winning scores by Franz Waxman, one from Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard, as well as A Place in the Sun the following year, deliver quintessential 50’s film music. Next is Alex North’s New Orleans-spiced 1951 score for A Streetcar Named Desire, the first important Hollywood score to incorporate jazz. The great Leonard Bernstein scored only one film, but On the Waterfront (1954) is widely regarded as cinematic classic. ‘Vintage Cinema’ then turns to the 1960s in its three final tracks: Rózsa’s Spanish-flavoured overture to the lavish Charlton Heston epic, El Cid (1961), Elmer Bernstein’s main title theme from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and the rousing “Ride of the Cossacks” from Taras Bulba, a 1962 film scored again by the inimitable Franz Waxman.

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