The Bells of St. Genevieve and Other Baroque Delights
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Customer Reviews
Best CD I own!
The Bells of St. Genevieve CD is a great addition to any collector of great Baroque Music. Treat yourself!!!
One of my all-time classical favorites
I reach for this CD time and again. It is both relaxing and upbeat. I like every recording on this CD...even if they are selections and not the complete works. You cannot go wrong this this purchase!!
The Bells! The Bells!
I give this album an average rating as it does what it sets out to do which is give the average listener of classical music various average samples of average performances of great classical compositions. Albums such as these are always a great way to explore various or specific classical music styles with pieces that are usually not too intrusive to the common ear. The only downside of these albums is that they unfortunately, more often than not, introduce a new listner to only the most elementary of performances and leave them believing that all others sound as the ones they just heard when such differences in most cases are huge ones. I chose to review this particular album after hearing the Sonnerie "Bells" de Ste Genevieve on this album (originally composed by the unfortunately obscure Marin Marais) as it is a perfect example of what I am trying to convey.
Although some but few classical chamber pieces can be played well by pretty much any average group, some pieces such as "The Bells" require a certain expertise in instrument and style that very few musicians can properly apply to bring out all of the desired qualities of the piece. The interpretation on this album is a perfect example. Marin Marais was a French Baroque composer who was one of several royal court composers for King Louis XIV in the 17th-18th centuries. He was a soloist prodigy in the viola da gamba which actually sound as if they're being played by cellos here instead. Aside from any change in instruments, they are played with such deficiency in terms of quality, interpretation, and execution,here that it is rather sad that this would be included in an album such as this one. The viola is an instrument with a lot of range as it has more strings and is larger than the cello and the notation is made for the range of such instruments. In particular, there are literally less than five musicians today who are anywhere near proficient with this type of music and those playing here aren't anywhere near the top contenders. All of these things take out an enormous aspect of the full potential of this piece in terms of how it is supposed to sound and performances such as the one here are literally mutilations instead of transcriptions or interpretations. Such performances in many ways cheat the curious listener who is exploring this music as to the music's real potential as intended by its genius source. I recommend to those who may have heard a sample of the 'Bells' here and liked it to then compare it to the performance of this piece by Jordi Savall and Le Concert Des Nations in the soundtrack for 'All The Mornings of the World" available on Amazon. You will hear what I mean and understand how there's simply no comparison. Jordi Savall is the undisputed master in performing on authentic violas that have completely different acoustics than their modern counterparts. Savall is also an established conductor of French Baroque music unlike those here who completely misinterpret the piece as a result. Buying classical music is not as simple as just buying a certain piece by any performer thinking it's great. Unless you really don't care too much and just want to use it as background muscac in your life, classical music requires fine tuning just like playing the instruments themselves as the musicians are in a sense the instruments of the composer and the conductor's interpretatation. Don't settle for second best because the catastrophic results such a choice entails is similar to the range on the Richter scale: the difference between a No. 1 and a No. 4 best performance is exponential as the difference with the 'Bells' version I have mentioned perfectly illustrates. There are differences between symphonic and chamber groups, conductors, soloists, instruments, specialities of technique, production, etc. All of these things fine tune the performance and make the difference between epic and atrocious.
In sum then, although this album is a great source of introductory material as to the range of classical styles and in some cases has reputed perfomers, it is certainly not a sample of the best performances around. These types of albums always require a closer look because you never know what you're gonna get anyway unless you know what you're looking for. Trusting record labels to find stuff for you is not always a good idea. More often than not, this is the place where mediocre professionals can make some form of living without having to wait for a major deal that's never gonna come. If you feel you like the style of music here once you've heard it, expand your horizons in terms of performances as many on this album and similar ones are often simply mediocre in one form or another and there's stuff that's so much better out there for your listening enjoyment of a particular composition and/or style. Hope this helps! Good luck!
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