Customer Reviews

The 99 Most Essential Baroque Masterpieces

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In reading other critiques of this extraordinary item, I'm struck by the fact that somebody's obviously not paying attention. These beautiful and plentiful selections are the baroque interpretations of these musical masterpieces....hence the use of harpsichords and other instruments more authentic to the period many of them were actually written. That said, the music, the performances and the quality of the recordings, coupled with the ridiculously low price make this an offering more than worth the price! It may not be for the classical music purists and scholars, who may already have much of this material in their collections, or may find the disconnected placement of the individual pieces off-putting, but for the more casual classical music fan, it's simply divine! ENJOY!

This is an amazing deal for casual listeners looking to expand their classical music horizons. Sure, a few classical music elitists might gripe about a few sub-par renditions here, but if your simply looking for great classical music at a great price, you've found it.

This is an incredible buy. I enjoy classical music a good deal, and find that a selection like this (that can play literally all day behind me while I work) is a wonderful investment. I get more done, I am happier, and all because of a great selection of classical music that Amazon picked out for me. Unlike one reviewer below, I'd say that most of these selections are quite listenable. They are not all gems, but some of them are, and that's why it is just amazing to find them all together for this price. Yes, the artists are primarily not well known, or Eastern European names that you wouldn't easily recognize, but they are talented, and the music is generally well recorded. Quite an excellent buy.

Composer is included in the file information. This is baroque so it's going to sound well, baroque. Of course there are going to be some you aren't 100% thrilled with, but come on...it's $5 for all of them!

I seldom review, but I have downloaded seven of these collections and I think they're terrific. I'm no expert, but both the playing and sound quality are generally excellent in comparison to other versions of the same pieces that I have in my collection -- at a tiny fraction of the cost. My only quibble would be that, in this baroque collection, about 53 of the pieces were written by Vivaldi or Bach, so there is probably some overlap with the separate "99 Essentials" for those composers. Still, that leaves at least 46 discrete pieces for $5.00, which is pretty good!

Sure, this is a great deal, 99 masterpieces of classicals for only $1.99...Yeah, but there's a catch.

What's the issue you might ask? Well, it's simple, I expect the orchestral composition, pure and simple. For example, take the first piece in the list, The Four Seasons - Spring, by Vivaldi, 1 second into the music, I was telling myself, "wait a minute, this is not the music that I heard before," at the 9 second mark, I had to stop it, and found myself the "other version" and play it. Sure enough, they are different, that's right, this is not the orchestral version (at least) I was expecting. Moving on to the second piece, Canon in D Major, gosh, compare to this, the rock version of the Canon on Youtube is classical heaven....

This is not to say this is a bad colletion though, piece 22, The Four Season - Summer was an "original" done by the St. Petersburg RTV Symphony Orchestra, was perfection, and there are many others in this album as well. I'm definately a picky person when it comes to classical music, and I guess this explains this review then. Your mileage might very of course, but know what you'll be getting.

The "99 Most Essential" albums are obviously a great value. My one complaint is that the composers are not listed on the tracks. I would like to know that it's Pachelbel's Canon not just that it was recorded by Musica Antiqua New York. Other than that, a nice recession concession from Amazon.

For whatever reason, the directors of each of these song versions seem to have felt the need to include the Harpsichord. Why? Who knows. These are undoubtedly some of the masterpieces of classical music, though the versions you are getting are utterly uninspiring. Not worth the space on my iPod even if they were free.