Great Music, Bad Layout
580411
My Five Star rating is for the music.

I am a long time Billie Holiday fan and love all of her music; it's taken many years, but I am confident that I have acquired virtually everything she ever recorded.  Although I enjoy every period of her musical development, I am particularly fond of the tracks she recorded for Norman Granz on the Verve label in the 1950's.  Naturally, I was thrilled when this box set was announced.

While I am grateful to have so complete a box set as Verve has issued here, I have severe problems with the way the material is presented.  It's nice that they have released virtually everything in the Verve vaults, but in so doing they have included live performances, alternate takes, false starts, and even some rehearsals.  That would have been fine with me, if they hadn't decided to place everything in strictly chronological order.  We therefore get Lady Day's great studio sessions interspaced with live concert performances, chatter, rehearsals and incomplete takes, and the total effect makes for very poor continuity.  It also makes the boxed set, on the whole, very difficult to enjoy.

A few of the live concert performances have never been released before, and I was thrilled to hear some "new" Billie Holiday.  But the audio quality and Billie's performance varies greatly on the live material, and the result is very uneven.  And the inclusion of the rehearsal material is questionable, even if you're a die-hard fan like me.

The 1955 rehearsal with Jimmie Rowles is particularly problematic.  This session was released on an LP called Songs and Conversations shortly after Billie's death, and I was frankly surprised to find it included here.  It consists of mostly drunken rambling conversation while Billie rehearses with her favorite and most sympathetic pianist.  Some of the language is quite raunchy, although most of the discussion is hard to follow anyway, as the audio quality is particularly poor.  The alternate studio takes are frequently annoying, especially when they include two or three false starts in a row, and the spoken intros by Norman Granz often included in the master takes are completely unnecessary.  It would have worked so much better if they had simply separated the live concert material from the studio sessions and then saved the alternate takes, false starts and rehearsal material for the last couple of discs.  It's a pity - I would love to be able to listen to all of Billie's wonderful 1950's studio sessions all the way through, without the distractions of the extra material.  Happily, I see that Verve will release a new boxed set of just the studio masters in December 2005.  Hopefully they will skip all the chatter (I don't need to hear Mr. Granz announce "All Or Nothing At All, take 5").  A great deal of expense and angst could have been avoided if the track layout for this set had simply been better thought out.

As for Billie's performances, there is not a bad moment in any of the studio recordings presented here, including the notorious three April 54 tracks that she later dismissed, complaining that the band was drunk.  The musicians are all first rate throughout these sessions, and present her with the sympathetic backing she deserved and worked best with.
1812963
Great album... Really *LOUSY* format!

The 1-star is for DualDisc, NOT a truly enjoyable album by Bruce. A similar rant will be posted for the DualDisc version of "WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE SEEGER SESSIONS".

Not only can I not use these discs in my PC, and I have gotten to the point where I do a LOT of my listening while on the PC, but I have found that the discs also will not play in certain stand-alone players. Wanna import into your iPod??? FORGET it!!!

The ONE good thing I'll say about the DualDisc format is that it's not being foisted on the general public anymore!!

Not to defend Sony, but they do warn right on the package that the DualDisc format MAY not work in all players. Now if they would just reissue this album, as well as "WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE SEEGER SESSIONS" on a standard CD format I would be happy. Make that *happier*! As it is, I can't get either album into my iPod and, rather than pay iTunes for a digital download, I would rather pay for a *real* CD version of each album for my collection.
4582650
Great collection of piano arrangements of many of the greatest hits from the OST. My only complaint is the binding. It should be a crime to print a music book that has a binding that won't let it stay open when sitting on a music stand. Would recommend making copies of the music you want to learn so you don't damage the book itself.

Here is a list of the included songs:

City Ruins - Ray of Light
Peaceful Sleep
Memories of Dust
Birth of a Wish
Amusement Park
A Beautiful Song
Voice of no Return - Guitar [Note: This isn't an arrangement for guitar; it is based on the version of the song with guitar accompaniment.]
Grandma - Destruction
Emil's Shop
Treasured Times
Vague Hope - Cold Rain
Weight of the World [with lyrics in English and Japanese]
End of the Unknown
Pascal
Dark Colussus - Kaiju
Copied City
Wretched Weaponry
Mourning
Dependent Weakling
Rebirth and Hope
War and War
Vague Hope - Spring Rain
Song of the Ancients - Atonement
Emil - Despair
Faltering Prayer - Starry Sky
Alien Manifestation
The Tower
The Sound of the End
4864704
One of the main issues with it are the awkward cuts from some of the tracks. When you listen to them on other sources, they cut parts of the track so it feels like you don't get the entire song. Thankfully, it's only an issue with a few of the tracks, so you still manage to get the complete song out of most of the tracks. It's still something to keep in mind, however.
2118214
The track titles are mislabled on the CD cover sleeve.  This causes a problem when you purchase the CD and buy the other bonus tracks on MP3 only to realize you purchased a song that you already own.

I am big fan of Bonus Tracks and particular versoins of CD's having particular songs, however, when the track titles are mislabled it causes a headache for the fan trying to complete the music collection.

Music is quite good and it is a great progression of Twiztid's music.  However the track labeling is unforgivable.  If you are going to publish multiple versions of your CD, they must be labled correclty.
3808321
I dunno what the folks below are talking about.  Voting to balance it out.  One weird thing I noticed is that all the songs are well mixed except for The Mirror.  Granted this was from Yahoo! Music and all of the other tracks have the same mixing.  Everything is kind of muddled and not much range on the one track.
3747499
The music is amazing, but the audio quality of the songs are lousy. I own this collection on vinyl, and I have done a complete transfer to digital sound, with noise removed, and it sounds 10 times better than this. The treble is muted, and there is too much bass in these recordings. If you like the music, I strongly suggest you find it on vinyl on ebay, if you have a turntable. I would love to publish my mastering of this audio, but that would be illegal I think.
579491
I'm a huge Webber fan and was playing music book collections of his music back when I was 13.  Well, when the movie came out, I took a chance that the sheet music will have improved from his earlier collection and it indeed had!  The songs are richer plus all of the major songs are available.  "Angel of Music", "MotN", and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" are probably the most beautiful.

As for my meager complaints.. I still await a really complex release of these songs.  I only found myself struggling with one song in the first day that I got the book.  The biggest complaint I have in reference to this is the simplistic left hand.  In the old and newer arrangements of these songs, the left hand often has to resort to lazily hitting one note.  I know something more complicated could have been done with the left hand.

But then... if you are advanced enough to complain about the difficulty of this book, you should be advanced enough to ad-lib in your own improvements to the music.  And, really, even John Williams' arrangements are at this level of difficulty, so I may be hoping for arrangements that are rarely released by any movie/musical composer.

So aside from those small complaints, the music is just beautiful in this book... the way you play them has a flow that reminds the player of how it is sung, entrancing.  I highly suggest it to piano-playing fans of PotO.
1382587
Musically, this is ... well, it's Hogwood, a performer/conductor of extraordinary tastes!

However, I do *not* recommend the digital-download version.  It has severe digital-compression issues, especially audible in the opening of Petite Symphonie.  It sounds "burbly" for lack of a better description.
214537
Song info is wrong on 3/4's of the tracks.  At least it's not the info for a completely different collection which happens too often. Wrong
idenentifiers make collections very hard to work with.
2073323
The musical and intellectual contents of the album are excellent.  I have two reservations.  The more important one is that the sound level of the musical numbers is much louder than the level of the spoken text.  The result is that either Cooke's commentary is difficult to hear or the musical excerpts are very loud.  Switching sound levels is possible, but the switching would be necessary so frequently that it is hard to follow with the booklet's illustrations from the score.  The minor reservation is that a hinge on the album was broken, making it awkward to manipulate.  This was not indicated on the original ad.
3862050
Too many arrangements in this collection look like notated improvisations. Some are too (unjustifiably) chromatic for my taste (especially those tunes arranged by George Shearing). The layout looks like a collection of scanned music sheets. Titles have different typefaces. Some pieces have chords and/or dynamics notated, other don't etc.
3799033
Overall I'm pleased. The sound quality is really good, excellent even for the price- clear with plenty of
volume. That goes for the FM radio too, stations come in better on this device than on any other radio I
own. The battery really lasts and lasts and charges very quickly. However the interface is confusing and
the file system useless. If all you want to do is put the player on shuffle it's fine, if you want to keep your
music organized- forget it. Things which should be in alphabetical or numerical order aren't. Even if they
come up mostly in order there will always be things out of order for no explainable reason. As for the video
player and music files other than mp3's [it comes with two pieces of software- video tools.rar and
TTPlayer] you'd better know what you're doing to begin with because the instructions are so poorly
translated into english they're no help at all.
2342537
This would be perfect but for the fact that, when zoomed in, you must exit the zoomed page in order to navigate to the next page of the music. Then, of course, if you enlarge that page you have to go through the whole process again in order to get to the following page.  The only upside is that they're simple little ditties that should be easy to memorize therefore making it not necessary to have to read the music at all.
2919087
This is a very wonderful album and extremely enjoyable. Highly recommend!

However, Amazon has the wrong track listing (Lukas' Passion) posted for this album.

I have provided the correct track listing below.

Rhapsodie Georgienne, op. 25 [16:03]
(pour Violoncello et Orchestre)
1. Part I
2. Part II
Reiner Hochmuth: Violoncello
Polnische Kammerphilharmonie
Wojciech Rajski: Conductor

Triple Concertino, Op. 47 (1968 Version) [16:31]
(fur Violine, Violoncello, Klavier und Orchestre)
3. Allegro Marciale - Lento - Allegro - Presto
Gobel-Trio Berlin
Nurnberger Symphoniker
Uwe Mund: Conductor

"Die Chinesische" Sinfonie Nr. 3, op. 83 [25:00]
4. I. Lento
5. II. Allegro Pesante
6. III. Adagio
7. IV. Allegro
Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz
Peter Gulke: Conductor

[Disclaimer: The track list for this album is provided as a courtesy, because at the time of this listing, there were no song titles available on this page, for this title. We feel that you should be aware of what songs are on this album before making your purchase. Enjoy!]
3589784
In electronic format it does not let you go straight to a chord by the index on the right side.  You have to flip through the pages.  A quick index based on the tabs on the right would have been perfect.
465316
These are really great transcriptions of Led Zeppelins first 5 albums.
The only reason why I give it 4 stars is due to the format in which the
books are published. I literally need to tear these books apart in order
to lay it out to read and play. The binding of the paperbacks are such
that creasing the book open more or less ruins it!
Please provide these great transcriptions in a "spiral bound" format so that we
can open the book on a stand while playing!
Too many of these books are done so cheap forgetting something as simple
as that! Also the font is so small you need binoculars to read!
Consider these improvements. I for one would pay more!
CaleyD
Zofo