Barbra Streisand

Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and filmmaker. During a career spanning six decades, she has become an icon in multiple fields of entertainment, winning numerous awards, and has earned her recognition as Mother of All Contemporary Pop Divas or Queen of The Divas. She has been recognized with two Academy Awards, ten Grammy Awards including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Grammy Legend Award, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Kennedy Center Honors prize, four Peabody Awards,The Presidential Medal Of Freedom and eleven Golden Globes. She is among a small group of entertainers who have been honored with an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award, of whom only she and one other have also won a Peabody.

Streisand is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with more than 72.5 million albums in the United States and with a total of 245 million records sold worldwide, making her the best-selling female artist among the top-selling artists recognized by the Recording Industry Association of America, (The only female in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock 'n' roll genre.)

Classical Barbra

Classical Barbra is a studio album by Barbra Streisand, released in February 1976 but recorded in 1973. The album consists of songs by classical European composers and includes tracks sung in English, French, Occitan, German, Italian and Latin. The music is performed by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Claus Ogerman. Leonard Bernstein wrote of the album, "Barbra Streisand's natural ability to make music takes her over to the classical field with extraordinary ease. It's clear that she loves these songs. In her sensitive, straightforward, and enormously appealing performance, she has given us a very special musical experience." The album has been certified Gold in the United States for sales of 500,000 on May 5, 1999. In 2013 the album was remastered and 2 bonus tracks were added.

Track listing

Claus Ogerman

Claus Ogerman (born Klaus Ogermann, 29 April 1930) is a German arranger/orchestrator, conductor, and composer, best known for his works with Billie Holiday, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Frank Sinatra and Diana Krall.

Life and work

Born in Ratibor (Racibórz), Upper Silesia, Ogerman began his career with the piano. He is definitely one of the most prolific 20th century arrangers and has worked in the Top 40, Rock, Pop, Jazz, R&B, Soul, Easy listening, Broadway and Classical music fields. The exact number of recording artists for whom Ogerman has either arranged or conducted during his career has still not yet been determined.

In the 1950s, Ogerman worked in Germany as an arranger-pianist with Kurt Edelhagen, Max Greger, and Delle Haensch. Claus (then Klaus) also worked as a part-time vocalist and recorded several 45 rpms under the pen name of "Tom Collins", duetting with Hannelore Cremer - and he also recorded a solo vocal with the Delle Haensch Jump Combo as well. In 1959, he moved to the United States and joined the producer Creed Taylor at Verve Records, working on recordings with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Kai Winding and Cal Tjader - among countless others. Verve was sold to MGM in 1963. Claus Ogerman, by his own admission in Gene Lees' Jazzletter publication, arranged some 60-70 albums for Verve under Creed Taylor's direction from 1963-1967. During this time he also arranged a large number of pop hits, e.g. in 1961 "Cry To Me" by Solomon Burke, including also those of Lesley Gore. In 1966 Ogerman arranged and conducted Bill Evans Trio with Symphony Orchestra (Verve Records). In 1967 he joined Creed Taylor on the A&M/CTi label.

Columbia Symphony Orchestra

The Columbia Symphony Orchestra was an orchestra formed by Columbia Records strictly for the purpose of making recordings. It provided a vehicle for some of Columbia's better known conductors and recording artists to record using only company resources. The musicians in the orchestra were contracted as needed for individual sessions and consisted of free-lance artists and members of either the New York Philharmonic or the Los Angeles Philharmonic, depending on whether the recording was being made in Columbia's East Coast or West Coast studios.

Bruno Walter

Perhaps the most important recordings the orchestra made were with conductor Bruno Walter, who recorded highly regarded interpretations of Beethoven's, Brahms's, Bruckner's, Mahler's and Mozart's symphonies. With this orchestra, Walter made his only stereo recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 9, which he had conducted at its world premiere.

Thomas Beecham

In 1949, Sir Thomas Beecham made a series of recordings in Columbia Records' 30th Street Studios in New York City with a completely different pickup group, which was also called the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Later reissued by Sony on CD, the recordings include Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli, the overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor by Otto Nicolai, Carmen Suite by Georges Bizet, and Capriccio Italien by Peter Tchaikovsky.

Orchestra

An orchestra (/ˈɔːrkᵻstrə/ or US /ˈɔːrˌkɛstrə/; Italian: [orˈkɛstra]) is a large instrumental ensemble used in classical music that contains sections of string (violin, viola, cello and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes be grouped into a fifth section such as a keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and, for 20th and 21st century compositions, electric and electronic instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus. The orchestra grew by accretion throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, but changed very little in composition during the course of the 20th century.