2 CDs for the price of 1!
These discs were previously issued separately as Reference Recordings RR-64CD and RR-74CD

These celebrated HDCD recordings were greeted with critical raves when first released. American Romantic George Chadwick wrote music full of orchestral color and wide dynamic range. The Symphonic Sketches have long been an audiophile favorite, but have been sorely in need of a new, top-quality recording. Aphrodite, Tam O‘Shanter, Melpomene and the other works have equally appealing qualities.

R E V I E W S

"This is warmly recommended for fine rare repertoire and typically sprung, lively sound with power and subtlety aplenty."
- MusicWeb International

"The Suite symphonique (1909) sounds surprisingly like Elgar, especially in this key, since both composers drew on similar continental sources... Aphrodite (1912) is a full-blown, half-hour symphonic poem based on a classical Greek statue taken to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Chadwick imagined the events which must have occurred around the harbour where the goddess had stood witness for centuries and he constructed a set of eight scenes based on love, death and the sea. The Suite symphonique is rooted in early Wagner, but Aphrodite draws with equal conviction on Tristan or even Franck. Horatio Parker was Chadwick’s pupil – he finally sent him to Rheinberger – and Ives’s teacher at Yale. The Elegy is dignified and restrained, a New Englander’s expression of grief.
Chadwick was not an original composer. In many ways he exemplified the Germanic subservience that Charles Ives hated and later generations of Americans went to Paris to avoid. But what tips the balance in his favour here is the outstanding quality of these performances under Serebrier, brilliantly recorded too. Everything Chadwick imagines comes off and the music seems more personal with repeated hearings."
- Peter Dickinson, GRAMOPHONE
(from review of original release of RR-74)

"This is a definitive set of Chadwick’s best-loved orchestral showpieces. The sound on the reissue – like that of the originals – is ravishing, especially that of massed violins. Dynamics are first-rate. If you love American classical music or need a new sonic spectacular to test our system’s dynamics, this double dose of orchestral Chadwick just might be what you’ve been looking for." – Jim Saxon, soundstage.com

"The performances under the experienced Jose Serebrier are first-rate, and the recording conveys both detail and a sense of space." --Anthony Burton, BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

"Reference Recordings have shown real fidelity to the creativity of Jose Serebrier. Not only that they have encouraged him in some tangy and imaginative repertoire but now some of there earliest projects are being reissued as twofers. [Chadwick] is warmly recommended for fine rare repertoire and typically sprung, lively sound with power and subtlety aplenty." --Rob Barnett, Classical Music on the Web