About this Artist

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Editorial Reviews

If you like American music and/or if you like twentieth century opera, you've got to hear this 1976 recording of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" with Lorin Maazel leading the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus. For one thing, it's the first complete recording of what is then and is still now widely regarded as the great American opera. Every bar of the 599-page vocal score is included, bringing the total time of this three-disc Decca set to a mere minute and a quarter short of three hours. For another thing, it has a fabulous, very youthful cast led by Willard White as a heroic Porgy and Leona Mitchell as a sumptuous Bess and featuring Florence Quivar as a sorrowful Serena and a young Barbara Hendricks as heartbreaking Clara whose "Summertime" will melt the coldest heart. For yet another reason, it has brilliantly colorful and tremendously immediate stereo sound produced by Michael Woolcock and engineered by Colin Moorfoot. But most importantly of all, it has the buoyantly rhythmic and wholly dramatic conducting of Lorin Maazel and the gleaming virtuosity of the Cleveland Orchestra at the peak of its post-Szell form. Together they gave Gershwin's masterpiece a performance of consummate musicality and unquestionable authenticity that had not yet been matched by the 2007 release of this striking remastering James Leonard, All Music Guide

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