Editorial Reviews

EMI's Best Romantic Classics 100 may fulfill some listeners' needs by providing the most familiar excerpts and short pieces of nineteenth and twentieth century "mood" music, but it is unsatisfying in several other aspects. First, anyone who wants complete works will be annoyed by the rather large number of extracted sections, which in most cases amount to little more than four or five minutes of the best-known thematic passages, culled from famous concertos, symphonies, sonatas, ballets, and operas that are much, much longer. While it is expected that only brief examples could be included in a six-disc collection of 100 tracks, it would have been preferable to have complete miniatures instead of token snippets. Second, the sound of the recordings varies substantially, depending on the session dates, venues, instrumentation, and recording technology, so the sonic depth, dynamics, textures, and timbres of the music can be quite realistic and brilliant on one track and dull and unimpressive on the next -- the risk that must be run in putting together any large compendium of music. Third, the term romantic is used broadly here, so the pieces are not just picked from the Romantic or post-Romantic periods, as some might expect, but music was also chosen for being lyrical and expressive -- in essence, romantic in feeling. Thus, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Leonard Bernstein, Stanley Myers, Thomas Newman, Michael Nyman, and James Horner are included for their love songs and film music of a passionate character, without much concern for observing categories or stylistic consistency. While this survey may give the listener a good idea of the variety of Romantic music, it delivers only a superficial sampling of recognizable fare that is well covered in numerous greatest-hits collections. Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide

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