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EL RECORDS | George Martin – The Velvet Revolution Sound Productions and Impressionist Influences coming soon…

George Martin: The Velvet Revolution - Sound Productions and Impressionist Influences, 3CD

• George Martin's work with the Beatles defined the sixties and changed music forever.

• As Paul McCartney said, ‘if anyone was the fifth Beatle it was him’.

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During the 1950's, Martin, a great appreciator of quirkiness, established the Parlophone label with a sequence of ingenious comedy records by The Goons, Peter Ustinov and Flanders and Swann; a precocious formula which caught the mood of the time and yielded hits for Bernard Cribbins and Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren. Then, in 1961, while George was in Cambridge recording Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller in the groundbreaking satirical revue, Beyond the Fringe, came news of of the label's first Number One hit, 'You're Driving Me Crazy' by the whimsical 1920's-style dance band, The Temperance Seven.

Martin described his productions as "Sound Pictures". He would coax a performance from the artist, the result sometimes embellished by sound effects and other imaginative acoustic devices.

The techniques George mastered while creating comedy records had everything to do with the production triumphs that would follow with The Beatles. When the band retired from touring and determined to concentrate on making albums with a pioneering approach to the whole new art of pop, Martin was well equipped to meet the group's challenging sonic demands and to propose a good many initiatives of his own; whether in the string quartet setting for ‘Yesterday', or when taking an orchestra into uncharted musical waters for 'A Day In the Life'.

George Martin had a very particular affection for the Impressionist composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. He claimed the former's ‘Prélude à l'après-midi d’un faune' was the piece that decided him on a career in music and saw ‘Strawberry Fields Forever' as a Debusseyesque tone poem. For George, Ravel was “one of the greatest orchestrators of all time", with the “choreographic symphony”, ‘Daphnis and Chloe’ a particular favourite.

This 3CD presentation comprises all of George Martin's productions for the Temperance Seven, the sheer surrealist-comic electricity he captured of Beyond the Fringe, (including the original chart album) and a selection of works by Debussy and Ravel, including Igor Markevitch's account of Debussy's 'Faun' made at Abbey Road and 'Daybreak' from Pierre Monteux's ravishing 'Daphnis and Chloe' with the London Symphony Orchestra.

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Ennio Morricone / Luciano Berio / Bruno Maderna / Luigi Nono: Sound and Silence - Four Pioneering Modernist Italian Composers, 3CD Set

• 3CD collection featuring four pioneering modernist Italian composers.

Although he was a superb melodist, it was in his deployment of a whole landscape of non-musical sounds, dissonant harmonies and silence, that Ennio Morricone revolutionised film music. His audacity, and his diverse musical palette (manifest in the spaghetti westerns he scored for Sergio Leone) came less from cinema than from the pioneering post-war generation of 'New Music' composers.

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Baden Powell/João Gilberto/Luiz Bonfa: Brazil On Guitar, 3CD Set

• Stan Getz once asked Brazilian conductor Júlio Medaglia, "Why doesn't Baden Powell move to Europe or the United States, where he would become the world's greatest guitarist?" To which Medaglia replied, "Because, maybe, he's already the world's greatest guitarist."

• The guitar in popular Brazilian music came to prominence during the late 1950s with the advent of Bossa Nova. Bossa evolved from the samba tradition; the style encapsulated in João Gilberto's ingenious distillation of the almighty roar of the samba drums down to the beat of a single guitar.

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John Coltrane/Ravi Shankar: Jazz Raga Spiritual Explorations of the Two Greatest Melodic Creators on the Planet, 3CD Box Set

• Three CD collection focussing on the spiritual explorations of the two greatest melodic creators on the planet.

“I was turning everybody I met on to Ravi Shankar because I thought that he and John Coltrane were the two greatest melodic creators on the planet.” David Crosby, The Byrds

“I like Ravi Shankar very much. When I hear his music, I want to copy it - not note for note of course, but in his spirit.” John Coltrane

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