"Famous" is Fabulous!
Michael B. Richman | Portland, Maine USA | 01/14/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
""Famous French Overtures" is another of the dozens of Decca Ansermet Legacy discs that I have picked up in the past year. The import Australian Eloquence label has been doing a commendable job reissuing the vast catalog of this wonderful conductor, but they deserve extra praise for confining so much of the previously widely available music to a small selection of reissues, so that releases such as this one have NO duplicated material. To the best of my knowledge, the only piece that appeared previously on CD in the States is the Lalo, and it was on a 20-year old (now OOP) disc in the old London/Jubilee volumes -- they didn't even plop one of these tracks on Ernest Ansermet: Decca Recordings 1953-1967 [Box Set] (see my review). As a result, all of these fabulous overtures were virgin territory for me, and I relished the listening experience all the more because of it. While I enjoy listening to Ansermet and the OSR play just about anything, it is in French fare that he truly excels. Interested parties should pick up "Famous French Overtures" while they can, before it's infamously deleted."