Michel Legrand - Vienna Holiay on 45

Well, I hope that I made up for the silliness of the demo record with this little bit of Michel Legrand.... his vignettes are great listening, his innovation (some would call that a nice word for it) with orchestrations are certainly eyebrow-raising, but all in all, Michel Legrand usually cones up with some very very tasty bits, and this is one of them.

Yes, I know, I just DID a Vienna-theme piece, but this is much different in scope, and more towards the mood music genre than the light-classical tone of the earlier RCA posting.

The interesting thing here, is that this set was released on 3 extended-play 45-rpm discs in an album, somewhat like what RCA was trying to do with their box sets. This was definately close to post-78rpm era, becasue if you look inside one of the gatefolds, there is a list of recordings available in the EP format. I didn't scan that, but I did scan the other gatefold, which holds the liner notes, and some other available sets at the time. See it here. If you want a full size view of the front photo, click here.

The music is well recorded, but there are a few noisy places where I had to roll off the top end a little because of the narrow groove pitch (damn Microgroove pressings!), but overall, a nice sonic capture, at least for microgroove 45rpm discs on cheesy polystyrene that Columbia loved to use at the time. Be aware also that M. Legrand takes occasional liberties with the length of the songs... this may be his doing, or it may be that, since this is a 45rpm EP set, Columbia had a nasty habit of making some albums "abridged". I hope that this is not the case here....

Without any further ado, let's go on a Vienna Holiday!