This record is one of the better executed attempts by "the squares" to understand
the Beatles, and one of the best examples of "classical versions of popular music" -- a genre that has no real reason to exist, but so be it.
Joshua Rifkin, who would later repopularize
Scott Joplin as a composer, "rediscovered and edited" these pieces, which set Lennon-McCartney melodies -- nothing past 1965 -- in the style of Handel, Bach, and Telemann. The liner notes and titles are groanworthy -- "Epstein Variations, MBE 69a" and "Cantata for the Third Saturday After Shea Stadium, MBE 58,000" -- but because
Rifkin is no hack, the music is accomplished. These are rhapsodies on themes, not simple symphonic transcriptions. The somber La Paix to which "Things We Said Today" is set reveals a melodic line not too far from an English melody such as "Greensleeves." Thankfully short, the record makes its statement -- a comical counterpart to the music theorists who wanted, at the outset of Beatlemania, to compare Lennon-McCartney to Bach and Mozart. ~ Ted Mills