Best Ever Mantovani Collection [Import]

Mantovani Orchestra | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 5, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 3
• Format: Import
• Label: Universal
• ASIN: B0009Z0ZVK
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #91,222 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #97 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Vocal Non-Opera > Songs & Lieder > Folk Songs

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Charmaine, song

2. September Song, song for voice & piano (from "Knickerbocker Holiday")

3. Stardust

4. Cara mia

5. Moon River (for the film Breakfast at Tiffany's)

6. [Excerpt]

See all 19 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Some Enchanted Evening, song (from "South Pacific")

2. And I Love You So

3. I Wish You Love, for orchestra

4. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, song (from "Roberta")

5. Lonely Ballerina

6. [Excerpt]

See all 19 tracks on this disc

Disc: 3

1. Waltz

2. My Hero

3. Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies

4. Oh Maiden, My Maiden

5. Waltz

6. Waltz

See all 10 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Australian pressing. 3 CD set. The ultimate Mantovani collection capturing the unique sound of his strings. 48 total tracks. ABC Classics. 2005.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mantovani's Music is the Best Ever!, October 12, 2005

By 

Thomas E. DeJulio (Bronxville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best Ever Mantovani Collection (Audio CD)

This is a wonderful three-CD compilation of some of the best original recordings made by the Grand Master of Light Orchestral music. But it also contains an added bonus: one of the CD's reproduces in its entirety the 1960 LP "Operetta Memories" which, although hard to find on CD, is by far one of Mantovani's finest albums of sound artistry which charted in the top 40 for 3 months in 1961. Today's marketing teams might have entitled this LP, "Strauss Waltzes ..And More" because it followed a few years after the phenomenally successful stereo LP recording of Strauss Waltzes (1958) and included the great studio version of "the hymn to champagne" Die Fledermaus Overture, and another Mantovani concert favorite, the Gypsy Baron Waltz, also known as the Sweetheart Waltz which has the Blue Danube running right through the melody as only the genius of Mantovani could create. The "more" is represented by extraordinary arrangements of popular operetta music by Franz Lehar and Emmerich Kalman. Mantovani's inventive sounds and synchronized strings are nothing short of spectacular on Kalman's Gypsy Princess Waltz and Lehar's Count of Luxembourg Waltz and Merry Widow Waltz. All ten tracks are time-honored melodies that you will keep you humming and remembering how incomparable the Mantovani sound is and will always be. Purchase this CD set for 48 tracks of the very best of Mantovani's prolific discography.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What happened to the great instrumentals of the past?, May 6, 2009

By 

Artist & Author (Near Mt. Baker, WA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Best Ever Mantovani Collection (Audio CD)

What happened to the great instrumentals of the past? Consider (all #1 Pop hits):
1956 - Lisbon Antigua (Nelson Riddle - 4 weeks); Poor People Of Paris (Les Baxter - 4 weeks, replaced by Elvis, 'Heartbreak Hotel'):
1958 - Tequila (Champs - 5 weeks):
1959 - The Happy Organ (Dave "Baby" Cortez - 1 week); Sleepwalk (Santo & Johnny - 2 weeks):
1960 - Theme from "A Summer Place" (Percy Faith - 9 weeks)
1961 - Wonderland by Night (Bert Kampfert - 3 weeks); Calcutta (Lawrence Welk - 2 weeks)
1962 - Stranger on the Shore (Acker Bilk - 1 week); The Stripper (David Rose - 1 week)
1962-1963 - Telstar (Tornadoes - 3 weeks)
1963 - Sukiyaki (Kyu Sakamota - 3 weeks) - a vocal, but in Japanese, making it akin to an instrumental in the U.S; Pipeline (The Chantays - ? weeks); Wipe Out (The Surfaris - ? weeks)

You get the idea - back then it wasn't just Mantovani playing instrumentals for old people. And, who can forget the dozens of chart instrumentals that didn't make it to #1 - A Swingin' Safari, Raunchy, That Happy Feeling, O Mein Papa (my favorite trumpet number, by Eddy Calvert), Woodchoppers Ball, Music Box Dancer, A Walk in the Black Forest, Bilitis, Wheels, The typewriter, Apollo 100s "Joy," Red River Rock, Diamonds, Shangri-La, Born Free, Calcutta, Alley Cat, Cast your Fate to the Wind, Exodus, Love is Blue, Mule Skinner blues . . . . not to mention Dick Dale and the other 'zillion' surfin' instrumentals.

Anyone who thinks the instrumentals of forty-five to fifty years ago are 'blase' doesn't know what he is talking about. Mantovani made a living out of taking popular songs and performing wonderful instrumental renditions of them. So did many other great orchestras.

Why not today? How do you 'instrumentalize' rap, or punk, or most of the other monotone, nasal 'music' of the past couple of decades? Until today's songwiters write MELODIES, we'll just have to keep replaying these great tunes of the past.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great find, June 2, 2010

By 

N. Turnquist - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Best Ever Mantovani Collection (Audio CD)

I bought this for my 92 year old mother - she is a huge fan of Mantovani and is able to listen to all of her favorites.