The latest CD releases reviewed

THE BEATLES
The Unseen Beatles Liberation Entertainment ****

Taken from the fascinating BBC Timewatch documentary, this ends with The Beatles' last ever gig, at San Francisco's Candlestick Park in 1966. Very much a story of a band on the ascent before drugs, Indian mystics and lawyers ruined the party. Here we see a remarkably innocent quartet trying to come to terms with the unprecedented success they were beginning to enjoy. A lot of people from the time - press officers and tour managers, etc - crop up to help flesh out the story, but what really sells this is the amount of never-before-seen footage. What comes across most is how, at the centre of Beatlemania, the group themselves remained remarkably naive and unaware of the madness going on around them. Brian Boyd

JOHN McCORMACK
Icon of an Age - The Anthology Zampano Productions *****

This timely anthology is a worthy tribute to the greatest Irish tenor of the last 100 years. It is a lavish production centred around a DVD documentary of his life, but the box also contains four CDs with wonderful singing from the man himself and his great contemporaries. To round off the collection the box also contains a booklet of his letters to a friend, which brings McCormack's personality to life and gives his opinions of the great singers of his day during a time that is now regarded as the golden age of operatic singing. The DVD brings together what filmic evidence exists of his career, while the CDs contain some of his most magical singing in opera up to the 1920s and afterwards - during his concert career when he was a superstar, particularly in the US. The producers are to be congratulated for this belated and welcome memorial to a great artist. Colman Morrissey