Search - Arthur Fiedler :: Sinfonietta

Fiedler the pops conductor is well-known and extensively documented on records. Much less familiar and very much worth knowing is Fiedler the pioneer of chamber orchestra programming in modern America. His sinfonietta in the 1930s introduced many music-lovers to compositions--mostly 18th-century, occasionally modern--that would become wildly popular a quarter-century or more later, after the twofold revolution of tape recording and long-playing records had vastly expanded our musical tastes. This collection contains three major eye-openers for those who think of Fiedler as only a showman: a recording of Pachelbel's Canon made long before it took up permanent residence at the top of the crossover charts; a Handel organ concerto made with one of the century's great masters of baroque organ style, and a 20th-century masterpiece in the sparse repertoire for viola and orchestra, with a solo by a major composer who was also a great violist. --Joe McLellan