Junk Box Jury

Tracks taken from the album “Presenting The Boston Pops” (Contour 2870 446) 1972

Classical Meets Contemporary | Boston Pops Review | In 1929, Arthur Fiedler, a 35-year-old violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was appointed as conductor of the Boston Promenade Orchestra, whose nickname of ‘The Boston Pops’ referred to its function of performing light classics as distinct from the parent orchestra’s symphonic repertoire.

Recent years, however, have seen the name adopted formally and applied literally, as Maestro Fiedler, white-haired, benign and eighty years young, has entered into the spirit of popular music . . . with no condescension or air of musical slumming but with a wholehearted involvement in the contemporary music scene, whatever it may be at any given time.

In addition to their interpretations of great show tunes and albums devoted to the music of Gershwin, Bacharach, The Beatles et al, the Pops have worked in active collaboration with soloists of such diverse talents as Duke Ellington, Chet Atkins and Peter Nero.

Classical Meets Contemporary | Boston Pops Review

This present collection is intriguing on two counts. Firstly, as a representative cross-section of popular music of the early 1970s, ranging from Francis Lai’s familiar Love Story theme and music from Jesus Christ Superstar to award-winning Simon and Garfunkel in Bridge Over Troubled Water and latter-day Beatles in Let It Be.

Secondly, as a living demonstration of the way a truly great orchestra and its enthusiastic conductor can transcend artificially created barriers of time, age and style, merely by doing their own thing and bringing to popular music their own brand of superb musicianship and that unmistakable ensemble tone, which comes as a breath of fresh air in a world stale with second-hand sounds.(C) Arthur Jackson

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cost of record: 50p
from: charity shop