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John Williams & Boston Pops Orchestra - Complete Philips Recordings (NEW 2022 21-CD boxset)


Jay

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Are those two discs the only ones that comprise previously released material?

 

then mixing both of them to spare expenses by one disc makes some sense.

 

if there are more discs with already released music…then i dont know why they chose only those two.

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Only By request is a compilation, containing some previously unreleased material... 

 

That's pretty clear on my discography. I deployed many efforts to make this discography as comprehensive as it can possibly be!

 

Putting previously unreleased material on a compilation is a pretty old habit in the pop domain. In JW's discography, this album is a kind of alien!

 

Screenshot_20211023-192811_Chrome.jpg

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1 hour ago, Luke Skywalker said:

Are those two discs the only ones that comprise previously released material?

 

then mixing both of them to spare expenses by one disc makes some sense.

 

if there are more discs with already released music…then i dont know why they chose only those two.

 

"Bernstein by Boston" contains the overture to Candide, which was recorded for the earlier "Pops Around the World" album.  I did a quick check and I don't think there are any other repeats (apart from "By Request" and "Pops Britannia" of course).

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11 minutes ago, Luke Skywalker said:

Where is it so cheap?

 

I bought it at a store that only ships to Norway. Here's a Swedish store where it's about €40 + shipping:

 

https://www.ginza.se/product/williams-john/conductor/508698/

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jpc have tweaked the content (21 CDs):

 

1.CD Pops on the March - Werke von Joseph Franz Wagner, Elgar, Tschaikowsky, Walton, Gershwin, Williams, Wilson, Newman
2.CD Pops in Space - Williams: Musik aus Superman, The Empire strikes back, Star Wars; Close Encounters of the third Kind-Suite
3.CD That's Entertainment (Pops on Broadway) - 
4.CD We wish you a merry Christmas
5.CD Pops around the World - Ouvertüren von Kabalewsky, Suppe, Auber, Glinka, Williams, Rossini, Bernstein
6.CD Aisle Seat - Filmmusik aus E. T., Chariots of Fire, Raiders of the lost Ark, New York, New York, Gone with the Wind; The Wizard of Oz, Singin' in the Rain, Friendly Persuation, Meet me in St. Louis 
7.CD Out of this World 
8.CD Prokofieff: Peter und der Wolf; Tschaikowsky: Nussknacker-Suite
9.CD Whith a Song in my Heart (mit Jessye Norman) - Songs aus The Boys from Syracuse, Rosalie, I married an Angel, You were never lovelier, House of Flowers, Can-Can, Hayride, Goldwyn Follies, Very warm for May, With a Song in my Heart 
10.CD Swing, swing, swing - 
11.CD America, the Dream goes on
12.CD On Stage
13.CD Bernstein by Boston - Bernstein: West Side Story (Auszüge), Simple Song aus Mass; 3 Stücke aus On the Town, Divertimento for Orchestra
14.CD Pops in Love
15.CD Holst: The Planets
16.CD Digital Jukebox
17.CD Lucky to be me (mit Jessye Norman) - Songs aus Love me tonight, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Lady in the Dark, Girl Crazy, The Boys from Syracuse, On the Town, Knickerbocker Holiday, My fair Lady, Yentl, One Touch of Venus
18.CD Salute to Hollywood
19.CD Pops a la Russe - Rimsky-Korssakoff: Cortege aus Mlada-Suite; Danse des buffons aus The Snow maidenBorodin: Polowetzer Tänze; Tschaikowsky: None but the lonely Heart; Mussorgsky: Eine Nacht auf dem kahlen Berge; Prokofieff: Troika aus Leutnant Kije-Suite; Khachaturian: 3 Stücke aus Gayaneh-Suite
20.CD Pops by Gershwin - Gershwin: An American in Paris; Porgy and Bess-Suite; Girl Crazy (Auszüge); Rhapsody in Blue
21.CD By Request / Pops Britannia - Williams: Liberty Fanfare; Marsch aus 1941; The Mission-Theme; Olympische Fanfare; JAWS-Theme; 3 Stücke aus Jane Eyre; Maxwell Davies: An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise; Delius: Brigg Fair; Grainger: Molly on the Shore; Traditionals: Londonderry Air; Scotland, the Brave

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On 23/10/2021 at 7:06 PM, Luke Skywalker said:

Are those two discs the only ones that comprise previously released material?

 

The 12th album in the series, "Bernstein By Boston", includes the track "Overture: Candide", which had already been on the fifth album in the series, "Pops Around The World (Digital Overtures)

 

The 17th album in the series, "Pops Britannia", opens with the track "Orbs and Sceptre", which had already been on the second album in the series, "Pops on the March"

 

And as mentioned, "By Request" contains only 5 new recordings, along with 11 tracks from prior albums.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Two tracks on "Pops Britannia" had already appeared on prior albums in the series.

 

The opening track "Orb and Sceptre" is track 2 on "Pops On The March", and track 5 "Fantasia On Greensleeves" is the closing track on "Pops In Love"

 

If the above track list is accurate, then nothing is missing in the box set, but 3 albums do not appear as they were initially released.

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On 20/10/21 at 3:43 PM, Matt S. said:

I wonder if this box set will include the original artwork for the albums?  I have Decca's box set of Zubin Mehta recordings, and the box design is nearly identical, but the disc sleeves themselves have no artwork.  

 

IMG_0616 (1).jpg

 

Adding to this question. I too have the Herrmann which kept the titles as basically they were shipped. Sometimes, like with Mehta's, I think Decca and others (WB, DG), combine smaller albums onto one CD and max that out.

 

For example, in the Benjamin Britten complete set (which was basically every piece of music Britten had written, generally conducted by him for Decca), each type of music (orchestral, opera, vocal) had its own color coding but generic covers as in the Mehta. Since these mostly represented a whole slew of combining of titles, this made sense. Sometimes the original album had a piece by Britten, and a piece by another composer, and they only included the Britten piece. Other times, three albums were spread over 2 CDs etc.

 

I have two other recent Decca box sets from this year - the complete Decca & Philips Böhm recordings and the Solti conducted Decca recordings in London. Both of these have original album art. In cases where the album was released in mono and stereo, they seem to have chosen the cover they like best. However, many CDs (in the case of Böhm), append additional material to the album pictured. In this case, a small image of the other album's cover is on the back of the sleeve.

 

For Boston Pops Williams collection, I am fairly positive we will get the original art as others have predicted. We'll get one primary one for the final combo disc or maybe artwork on both sides of the sleeve.

 

One other thing to look forward to - at least to hope for - Decca almost always releases PDFs of the books that ship with their CDs and box sets.

 

Here's the link (this set in question is not uploaded yet since it is still 6 weeks in the future).

https://booklets.deccaclassics.com

 

 

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43 minutes ago, Amer said:

I just can't think of playing BY REQUEST other than the program I'm used too.. 

 

Yeah, I understand!

 

I guess we have all the materials in the set, so we can make our own versions by duplicating the few tracks.

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I just don't get why they changed things at all. Was it just to save a couple pennies by only pressing 21 discs instead of 22?

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4 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

I can’t imagine buying this unless there is a significant improvement in sound


Since I don’t have the Philips Recordings, I cannot wait to have this; already pre-ordered. I would not be surprised if there is remastered sound.

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44 minutes ago, JohnnyD said:


Since I don’t have the Philips Recordings, I cannot wait to have this; already pre-ordered. I would not be surprised if there is remastered sound.


A very good reason to order!  The Philips run overall is superior to the Sony Classical, although my single favorite JW/Pops albums is a Sony one (Music for Stage and Screen)

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22 hours ago, Jay said:

What an awful waste of time making those changes instead of simply including the 22 albums as released

 

Has there ever been a Decca/DG "classical" box set with any duplicated tracks? I personally have not seen any. The problem is not necessarily with the new box (which, as you say, is complete), but with the original albums, lazy enough to duplicate tracks instead of recording a few more minutes of music! I personally prefer having no duplicated tracks since I can make playlists reproducing the semi-compilation albums.

 

22 hours ago, Jay said:

And why aren't they in order?

 

It looks like they went with recording dates instead of release. Perhaps the booklet will have more complete recording dates than originally printed on the sleeves.

Discs 1-4 rec in 1980.

Disc 5 rec in 1981.

Disc 6 rec in 1982.

Disc 7-8 rec in 1983.

Disc 9-11 rec in 1984.

Disc 12 rec date unknown, but likely 1984.

Disc 13-14 rec in 1985.

Disc 15 rec in 1986.

Disc 16-17 rec in 1987 (with additional tracks for "Lucky to be me" rec in 1989). Perhaps "Lucky to be me" was initially planned for 1987, but shelved because they only recorded 30 min of music then?

Discs 18-19 rec in 1988.

Disc 20 rec in 1989.

And the 2 semi-compilation albums combined at the end, rearranged with all the JW compositions first.

 

Makes sense to me, but we won't know for sure until it's in our hands.

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4 hours ago, Luke Skywalker said:

We must have in mind that it was 20cds so at least we must be gratefull all the

music is going to be released after all

 

What? 

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On 12/12/2021 at 2:08 PM, The Lost Folio said:

It looks like they went with recording dates instead of release. Perhaps the booklet will have more complete recording dates than originally printed on the sleeves.

Discs 1-4 rec in 1980.

Disc 5 rec in 1981.

Disc 6 rec in 1982.

Disc 7-8 rec in 1983.

Disc 9-11 rec in 1984.

Disc 12 rec date unknown, but likely 1984.

Disc 13-14 rec in 1985.

Disc 15 rec in 1986.

Disc 16-17 rec in 1987 (with additional tracks for "Lucky to be me" rec in 1989). Perhaps "Lucky to be me" was initially planned for 1987, but shelved because they only recorded 30 min of music then?

Discs 18-19 rec in 1988.

Disc 20 rec in 1989.

And the 2 semi-compilation albums combined at the end, rearranged with all the JW compositions first.

 

Makes sense to me, but we won't know for sure until it's in our hands.

 

Well, that certainly makes sense.  However, I wouldn't say "Pops Britania" is a "semi-compilation album", though!  Sure it contains two repeated tracks, but it's still got over 50 minutes of music recorded just for it with those tracks removed, which is longer than the earliest albums in the series.  it deserved to be on its own disc just like "Bernstein By Boston" does, which had its repeated track removed here.

 

And "By Request" is such a legendary, iconic album, they really should have re-released it exactly as is.  The 5 new recordings were meant to be heard in the places they are, in between the curated tracks they chose that had already been released.

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We absolutely don't care how they managed the content of the boxset as long as it is complete.

 

Real fans will reproduce the two dismembered original albums if they want to.

 

One thing I will do now, is to modify my disco to add "previously released recording" for the three repeating tracks on the Bernstein and Britannia albums...

 

@JunionDONE

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  • 4 weeks later...

Now listed with a price on Amazon.co.uk - £117 !!

Having a laugh at that price so have ordered it from Amazon.it for around £60. Can always cancel if co.uk drops the price.

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I have every album of this collection in original format, I am only missing "We wish you a merry Christmas"...

Is there a reason for me to buy this (besides the one missing album)?

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19 minutes ago, Nemesis said:

I have every album of this collection in original format, I am only missing "We wish you a merry Christmas"...

Is there a reason for me to buy this (besides the one missing album)?

 

No.

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The Sony box, unremastered, ok... it passed... but the Decca box unremastered, that's ridiculous.

Well, let's wait for the first reviews of this set, before concluding anything about the sound...

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Hmm just realised. Haven't got a single one of these albums. Perhaps it should go on my shopping list. 

 

I am missing some albums from the Sony box as well but only a handful. But this istempting. 

 

Karol

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26 minutes ago, Bespin said:

The Sony box, unremastered, ok... it passed... but the Decca box unremastered, that's ridiculous.

Well, let's wait for the first reviews of this set, before concluding anything about the sound...

 

Yeah I wouldn't hold my breath.  This has all the signs of a "lowest effort possible" product.

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43 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

Yeah I wouldn't hold my breath.  This has all the signs of a "lowest effort possible" product.

 

My test will consist of checking the WAV forms of "The Planets" CD, and those of the Suite from Jane Eyre (originaly released on Pops Britannia).

 

They are the most "problematic" recordings, mastered at a very too low volume on the original CDs.

 

Avoid clipping at all cost was a major concern for those 80s CDs...

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