RECORDING OF THE MONTH RECORDING OF THE MONTH BARGAIN OF THE MONTH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS A London Symphony Oboe Concerto £11 post free World-wide RACHMANINOV Elegy, Preludes, Piano concerto 3 £12 post free World-wide CHAUSSON, DEBUSSY RACHMANINOV TRios 2CDs £16 post free World-wide

AVAILABILITY Laurel Records

Harps of the Ancient Temples Conceived and Performed by Gail LAUGHTON The Hebrews 425 AD Japan 375 AD Pompeii 76 AD Greece 300 BC The Mayans 700 BC Crete 1400 BC Babylon 1500 BC Stonehenge 1600 BC Egypt 1700 BC Lemuria 16,000 BC Atlantis 21,000 BC Gail Laughton (harp) Rec. 1978. Remastered from original vinyl LP. ADD LAUREL LR-811CD [28:26]

Gail Laughton aided only by wind-chimes and finger-cymbals plies the twists and turns of time all the way back to Lemuria and distant Atlantis. His is inevitably an exercise in imagination. As it says on the disc: A 23,000 Year Trip Back Through Man's Magnificent Past: His Temples, Deities and Rituals - Expressed Through the Sounds of his Favorite and Eternal Instrument. What of the music? It is plangent and rhythmic (Hebrews), suitably oriental, alive with small bell noises and enigmatic (Japan), lapping with water (Pompeii), slow with a Ravel-like grace (Greece), shivering with tremolo (Mayans), shuddering with distant threat and distant ecstasy (Crete), darkly iterative (Babylon), surprisingly starry and serene (Stonehenge), a complex mingling kaleidoscope of de profundis figuration (Egypt), redolent of remote courts and courtly dances (Lemuria) and plangent and pearlescent with a shiver of cold illimitable ocean depths (Atlantis).  Perhaps you know the Bernard Herrmann film score for Beyond the Twelve Mile Reef. If you do then this music often touches base Herrmann’s cue for the fight with the octopus. This disc can be compared with the harp and ensemble music on Music in the Age of the Pyramids - Ancient Egypt – with music variously composed, arranged and conducted by Rafael Pérez Arroyo on Natural Acoustic recordings NAR001 (see review). That disc concentrates its speculative recreations on the Egypt of the pharaohs. It is therefore narrower in its fanciful mission. Oddly enough the longest piece on the Laughton disc is Egypt 1700 BC. The playing time is short overall – not even half an hour - but this reflects the collection’s LP origin. In fact the disc was prepared from an original vinyl LP. For those who delight in allusive speculative time travel or who must have every speck of music from the Ridley Scott film Blade-Runner (1982) which gave the disc brief celebrity. Rob Barnett AVAILABILITY Laurel Records   Advertising Rates Visitor stats MusicWeb International has over 40,000 Classical CD reviews on offer Discs received Having a problem Donating? Gerard Hoffnung Concerts & The Bricklayer Story MusicWeb can now offer you discs from the following catalogues: Prices include postage There will be NO VAT Rises [Acte Préalable £13.50] [Arcodiva £12.00] [Avie from £6.25] [British Music Society £12.00] [CDACCORD from £13.50 ] [ClassicO £12.50] [Hallé from £11] [Heritage £10] [Hortus £14.99 ] [Lyrita ONLY £11.75 ] [Nimbus Special prices] [Northern Flowers £13.50] [REDCLIFFE £11 ] [Sheva £11] [Tactus £11.50 ] [Talent from £12.00 ] [Toccata Classics £10.50 ] Musicweb Special Offers Monthly Best Buys   New Releases New Releases   MusicWeb sells the Polish catalogue CDAccord £10.50 post free W-W MusicWeb sells the Arcodiva catalogue £12.00 post free W-W £11.75 post-free world- wide     Google Ads - for information about privacy matters, click here.  Amazon Musicweb International is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

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