It is a truism that there is no bandwagon that cannot be jumped
on, and that goes for the classical music industry as much as
any other. Although no dates are given in the booklet, these
bleeding chunks are cut mainly from the Seventies and Nineties,
with a handful from other decades. The disc is cheesily subtitled
'19 tracks of winning music', which is true for
the main part, but there are some daft inclusions here and one
or two of the recordings are pretty moth-eaten. Charpentier's
'Prelude' is tinny, as is Puccini's 'Nessun
Dorma'. Recording levels have not been properly adjusted
either, so that some pieces are at a quieter overall level than
others. Furthermore, rather than allowing final chord reverberation
to die away naturally, some tracks have been faded down sharply
to digital silence, only in most cases for a few seconds of
space to intervene before the next track!
Most of the recordings are at least okay, however. The Prokofiev,
for example, is fairly new and of excellent quality, as are
the New Age-style pieces by Robert Prizeman, which, alas, make
Karl Jenkins sound like Beethoven. Speaking of whom, Prizeman's
Sacris Solemnis is based on the slow movement of Beethoven's
Seventh Symphony, but Beethoven would probably have sued for
calumny. No one who knows anything about real music would have
dropped Libera into an album of generally top-notch performers.
Despite that impressive array of big names, these are not all
stellar performances. Plácido Domingo's voice is almost
unrecognisable as his in this 1960s Nessun Dorma, and
his singing is pretty forgettable. The same goes for the slack-jawed
enunciation of Orff's O Fortuna by the London
Philharmonic Choir. Surely it would have been better to omit
Elgar's Cockaigne Overture, Ravel's Boléro
and the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
altogether than to fade them in with a few minutes left like
pop tracks!
The English Baroque Soloists in Purcell's Sound the
Trumpets are one of the few genuine highlights, and more
so the terrific account of the original version of Mussorgsky's
Bare Mountain by the Cleveland Orchestra.
The accompanying booklet, with its gaudy and rather strange
cover, gives a surprisingly detailed track-listing, far more
than the people who will buy this disc - sports fans who listen
to a bit of Classic FM, presumably - are likely to require.
Perversely, no information at all is given on the music or the
performers, and nor is any explanation given as to how these
pieces of music constitute an 'Olympic Experience'.
The programme ends in emphatic style, with the closing four
minutes of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but as an experience
this disc is generally more Falirakian than Olympian.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk
Track list
Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)
Also Sprach Zarathustra (excerpt) [1:35]
Marc-Antoine CHARPENTIER
(1643-1704)
Te Deum in D - Prelude [1:21]
Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Cockaigne Overture (excerpt) [6:22]
Modest MUSSORGSKY (1839-1881)
A Night on the Bare Mountain [12:38]
Giacomo PUCCINI (1858-1924)
Nessun Dorma [3:24]
Henry PURCELL (1659-1695)
Sound the Trumpet [3:43]
George Frideric HANDEL (1685-1759)
Water Music - Bourrée [1:13]
Music for the Royal Fireworks - La Réjouissance
[2:28]
Hallelujah Chorus [4:03]
Robert PRIZEMAN (b.1952)
Sacris Solemnis [4:04]
Angelis [4:29]
Jubilate [4:07]
Sergei PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
Dance of The Knights [4:06]
Carl ORFF (1895-1982)
O Fortuna! [2:36]
Richard WAGNER (1813-1883)
Ride of the Valkyries [4:15]
Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937)
Boléro (excerpt) [2:22]
Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Gloria all'Egitto, ad Iside and Triumphal
March [5:35]
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Ode to Joy (excerpt) [4:09]
Strasbourg Philharmonic/Alain Lombard (Strauss, Ravel)