MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Naxos Travelogue - Christmas goes Baroque: A Musical Tour of Switzerland, Germany and Belgium
Christmas music in the style of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi (arr. Peter Breiner)
Slovak State Philharmonic/Peter Breiner
rec. (music) House of Arts, Košice, May 1989. DDD
NTSC 4:3. PCM Stereo 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1. Region: 0 (worldwide). DVD
No recording dates or venues given
DVD Director: G Gachot
Camera: J L Dufor and M Weissman
NAXOS DVD 2.110546 [52.38]

Experience Classicsonline


 
Might as well get my grumble out of my system at the start, particularly as I enjoyed much of the photography, most of the locations and all the musical arrangements. It is just that the title could be deemed misleading as only two Chapters of the thirteen are not of Switzerland and two of the remaining eleven are not focused on Zurich. No problem though about the preponderance of Zurich.
 
Switzerland has existed as the world’s oldest democracy for some seven hundred years. It is the most linguistically and culturally diverse western European nation. Its diversity derives from its history; having experienced internal religious conflict, the Congress of Vienna guaranteed independence and neutrality in 1815. A new federal state of Cantons was formed in 1848 with Bern as the capital. The Cantons reflect cultural and linguistic variety. With borders with France, Germany and Italy these are the appropriate languages of the population who usually speak at least two along with English. The Romantsch dialect is also spoken by about one percent of its people. Zurich is the largest city, located at the north-western end of Lake Zurich, and has long been the industrial and banking centre of the country as well as a magnet for tourism. Its history includes being a centre of Protestantism.
 
It is on Zurich that the opening Chapters focus with views of the city streets at night dressed in resplendent Christmas decorations (CH.1). In the daylight, dusted in snow with a misty hue, the city looks less inviting albeit the bridge over the river Lammat and the mighty twin towers of the Cathedral are imposing (CH.2). The tradition of Christmas is central in December and the film visits the mechanical Father Christmas, a wonderful Christmas crib and the various toyshops with captivated children peering through the windows (CHs. 3-5). The great Minster, in all its internal magnificence appears to the melody of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen played in a baroque manner (CH.6). After brief visits to the Toy Museum in Nuremberg, a city well known as the centre of the German toy-making industry (CH.8), it’s back to Zurich to one of their leading toy emporia with a final visit to a window display of model trains zipping around snowy mountain scenery and model houses; captivating for the children, and, I do not doubt, their parents (CH.13). In between these last two visits, filming takes in a Brussels restaurant where seafood, not just moules and frites, is being prepared and where one can lust over the chocolates, not all Pralines (CH.10). Swiss winter landscapes (CH.12) and the Einsieden Monastery, an important centre of Catholic pilgrimage, are further diversions from Zurich. The monastery church is largely baroque in form (CH.11). The other interesting church visited is that at Engadine, a Romantsch-speaking district set in mountains and popular with visitors (CH.7). Both religious buildings have interesting frescoes and murals.
 
Each visit throughout this tour is accompanied by Baroque-type arrangements of mainly well-known Christmas music. Those chosen include Good King Wenceslas, The First Nowell, Jingle Bells, Silent Night and We Wish You A merry Christmas. With the arrangements being based on Baroque practice, brass is prominent but not overdone. Once or twice, as with O Tannenbaum (CH.12) the arrangement loses the underlying melody, for me at least.
 
Robert J Farr

see also review by Byzantion
 



 

 

 



 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.