This is the majesty of the symphony - with a beat. The melodies are among the greatest ever written. The tempos, the beat - pure rock and roll in a setting of the most beautiful tunes ever written and played by one of the world's leading orchestras - "101 Strings".

Perhaps this program will raise eyebows and be declared as the wrong treatment to these immortal classics. However, for the older listener who does not approve and considers this a desecration of classical works, we offer the following reasoning that led to the production of this album:

As a group, the teen-ager has the highest musical appetite in the world today. And too often this appetite for music (predominated by rhythmic, danceable tunes) must be satisfied with badly written songs with borderline obscene lyrics. For teen-age audiences, the beat is here. The longhair and parent alike should accept this fact. It is not wrong. It is wrong only when satisfied by material of inferior content. If the teen-ager is to develop musical tastes along with other maturites it can be readily appreciated that an exposure to good music in some form is a prerequisite to this development. It is the opinion of musically honest people that anything done well for what is, is good providing it fills the need of natural expression. And after all, the majority of our greatest composers were condisered very "far out" in their day, when they conceived the lovely melodies in this album.

The lush magnificence and Hi-Fidelity depth of "101 Strings" is due to a combination of factors. First in importance, is the concept of scoring for the strings. The necessity of using 101 strings instruments is to utilize various harmonies and voicings and not weaken the dynamic of quality of any one line when playing counter lines. This is particularly importance with the violins and violas, and creates a wonderful rich channel separation for Hi-Fidelity recording. The listener will note that a times the melody line is in full presence and possibly a full and lovely conter line is being played without sacrificing the full dynamic value of either. Secondly, the original performances have been records under the most exacting aucio engineering standards with specially designed microphones with characteristics to compensate for any possible distortion from the tremendous bass frequency response in cello and string bass. Third, and of extreme importance, are the players themselves. They represent the finest musicians in Europe today. There are, in fact, eleven concertmeisters in the first chairs.