Music Album Review: 'Romantic Favorites for Strings: Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmonic'

Album cover design: Henrietta Condak. (C) 1983 CBS Records

In the early 1990s, after my late mother bought me my first compact disc/cassette player-recorder/AM-FM radio stereo set as a birthday present, I stopped buying pre-recorded music on tape and focused on building a CD collection. I began to slowly replace the music albums I had in the cassette format on a one-for-one basis, a task that I completed in the early 2000s. (I had also hoped to replace some of the vinyl LPs that I had acquired in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but there some Reader's Digest-exclusive box sets of Boston Pops Orchestra and Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians that didn't have CD analogues, so this was one dream that never came true for me.) 

Every so often, though, I bought CDs of music that I didn't have in my modest audio library. Most of these were usually soundtracks to then-current movies, such as Clear and Present Danger, Beauty and the Beast, and Titanic, though I also bought my fair share of Billy Joel albums and Star Wars "cover" albums or expanded re-issues of composer John Williams' original music scores. 

However, I also made an effort to get recordings that featured compositions from the basic classical music repertoire. 

I've listened to classical music ever since I was a small boy living in Colombia, and many of my LP and audiocassette albums were recordings in that genre. Consequently, since I was attempting one-for-one replacement of those recordings with their CD versions, I already had quite a few classical music discs in my collection. 

I don't remember when in the 1990s, exactly, I purchased Romantic Favorites for Strings. I do remember where I bought it; I found it in the Classical section of the Camelot Music store in the Miami International Mall, which was the closest major emporium to my townhouse in the Fountainbleau Park area. It was on sale that day, as were two other CBS Records "Great Performances" CDs that ended up going home with me. 

Track 1: Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

CBS Records (now Sony Classical) dropped this reissue of Romantic Favorites for Strings on July 6, 1983. It wasn't a contemporary recording by the New York Philharmonic under its legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein; rather, it was a five-track compilation of tracks recorded by the orchestra between 1964 and 1971 by producers John McClure and Richard Killough. 

The first three tracks in Romantic Favorites for Strings were produced jointly by McClure and Killough. They are:

Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

Ralph Vaughan-Williams: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

Ralph Vaughan-Williams: Fantasia on "Greensleeves"

The last two tracks on this "Great Performances" recording were produced solely by McClure. They are: 

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Andante Cantabile from String Quarter No. 1, Op. 11

Gustav Mahler: "Adagietto" from Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor

Track 2: Ralph Vaughan-Williams: Fantasia on "Greensleeves"

My Take 

As I said earlier, I bought Romantic Favorites for Strings over 20 years ago at the Camelot Music store in the Miami International Mall. It must have been before 1998; that year, Camelot Music - which once was one of the largest retailers of prerecorded music in the U.S. -  was bought by Trans World Entertainment, and along with other record sellers bought by the conglomerate, was rebranded as f.y.e,  I distinctly remember getting it at Camelot Music because I used my "Repeat Performer" reward points card to get one of the other two CD albums for free. 

Interestingly, only one composition on this album (Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile) is from the Romantic era of classical music. The other four pieces - Barber's Adagio for Strings; Vaughan-Williams' Fantasia on "Greensleeves"; Vaughan-Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis; and Mahler's Adagietto - were written in the 20th Century. Nevertheless, the more modern pieces have, as the liner notes' anonymous author writes, "lush string lines and harmonic and melodic fluidity" that "fall well within the flavor of the Romantic era."

The liner notes are concise and informative, if perhaps a bit dry in tone. The anonymous author tells us a few relevant facts about each of the five compositions; Barber, we're told, wrote the Adagio in 1936 "as a slow movement of a string quartet" and based on "a single lyric subject stated at the outset of the movement. Canonic treatment follows, leading to a fortissimo climax and tranquil close."   In addition, Barber's Adagio for Strings was the only U.S.-origin work chosen by Arturo Toscanini as a selection for the New York Philharmonic's 1938 tour of South America. 

Another bit of classical music trivia from the liner notes concerns Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile: 

"The 'Andante cantabile' is in three-part form and is based on the Russian folk tune 'Vanya Sat on the Divan" that Tchaikovsky obtained from a carpenter in Kamenka, Russia." 

I actually bought this recording for Barber's Adagio for Strings, a composition that I first heard when I watched Platoon in February of 1987, shortly before it earned four Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director - Oliver Stone, Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing) at the 1986 Oscars. 

I already had a recording of Barber's Adagio; it was presented in two tracks of "Platoon and Songs from the Era: Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture". However, those two tracks were altered by the addition of (a) sound effects from the film and (b) a voiceover narration from the final sequence in Platoon.  I wanted a recording with a complete and unaltered version of Adagio for Strings; this Romantic Favorites for Strings was inexpensive but featured a great orchestra and a legendary composer/conductor: Leonard Bernstein. 

It took me a while to embrace some of the other tracks that follow Adagio for Strings, At first I was coolly indifferent to Vaughan-Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. I thought it was a bit too somber for my taste. I eventually grew to like it, but I prefer the same English composer's Fantasia on "Greensleeves," an old English melody that is not only credited - wrongly - to Henry VIII, but is also the melody of the Christmas carol "What Child is This?" 

This 35-year-old CD is still in print, but as the venerable (and versatile) compact disc is slowly phased out in favor of digital file formats, it is beginning to become hard to find except through niche sellers on eBay and third-party vendors on Amazon. I enjoy it, though, and I consider myself lucky to have it both on compact disc and as an Amazon Music digital album.