Light Music

As the 1950s drew to a close, television was gaining dominance over radio as the main source of home entertainment, and in the world of recorded music the long playing record – with the added benefit of stereophonic sound - was overtaking the single disc as the preferred choice for most music lovers’ collections. The idea of around forty minutes of music dedicated to a certain theme had a strong appeal and the ‘concept album’ gradually evolved. Those recordings – particularly the collections labelled ‘light orchestral’ or ‘easy listening’ - contained a wealth of beautiful sounds that were created by talented people with a genuine love of their craft. Stereo provided a new dimension, and this Guild CD attempts to recreate the excitement felt by record collectors around fifty years ago as they scanned the lists of new releases to see what new ‘Orchestral Gems in Stereo’ were being offered by their favourite conductors.

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