Customer Reviews

Albinoni's Adagios

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This compilation is a perfect work/study/contemplation CD, when you want to reduce the hum and din of modern life. It's wonderfully played, and has 23 tracks for a total of 72:45 minutes of melodic, serene music.

The famous Adagio in G minor, so often heard in films, etc., is here given a lovely rendition. Played a little faster than most other versions, with the individual instruments (especially the harpsichord) being heard clearly. It's not as lush and smooth as some recordings, but crisper, and to my ears, absolutely delightful.

It's hard to pick favorites among the other selections...each piece is a baroque beauty that flows well from one track to the next. I'm sure this CD will please most people who like 18th century music.
The recordings were done in 1970, '74, and '81, the sound is very good, and it's a great addition to my "quiet time" CDs.

I was glad to purchase this CD because it is now very difficult to find any recordings of Albinoni's string symphonies. There used to be a recording by Erato with all 3 movements of the 3 string symphonies, but then they wouldn't be all adagios for people who want their classical music slow and soft. This disc has a lot of very well played tracks. I actually found the Adagio for Organ and Strings a little fast for my taste, but I prefer slower tempos generally to allow a composer's music to breathe. This CD was pleasing overall due to the fact that most of the Albinoni recordings I have heard tend to sound like the strings are slightly out of tune or warped in the adagio passages. Not the case with this nicely packaged CD and the adagios of the concertos and especially the string symphonies at the end are patiently and hauntingly rendered. Remember what Mahler said about life and art: "If my life flowed as calmly and peacefully as a stream, I would cease to compose any music altogether."

I am certainly no authority on classical music, but I wanted to add my voice since this CD has garnered so very few reviews.

From my point of view the decision to make a series of CDs composed only of slow movements is a brilliant stroke. By moving seamlessly from one slow-tempo piece to another, one is truly allowed to relax while listening to this CD. While the classical purist might object to these pieces being extracted from their original settings, the lover of 'restful classical music' will rejoice.

Even better, this CD by its very nature avoids serving up a series of pieces we've all heard before (a pitfall, I find, in many so-called 'relaxation' classical music CDs). What we get instead is just one 'popular favorite' (the first track, which is of course fully deserving of its popularity) followed by more than twenty pieces most listeners have probably never heard before (but are in fact fully deserving of much greater exposure).

If you like quiet classical music, haunting classical music, simply gorgeous classical music, this is the CD for you.

The first on this CD is a gorgeous, extremely moving, somber piece that drew me in the first time I heard it. Adagio in G minor apparently was a hit in France 20 years ago and the idea of French lovers dancing to this sad, incredibly beautiful symphonic arrangement captured my imagination. I heard this piece on the radio and searched for it for weeks thereafter. When I found it in Borders, I was delighted. And when I played it at home, I was not disappointed. One of the best classical CDs I own.

I love Bach and Vivaldi. I have lately been accumulating Vivaldi Concertos like they are going out-of-style. I stumbled across this CD at the store while looking for a Bach CD and decided to give it a try. I've heard Albinoni's famous Adagio in G minor, but was not familiar with his other works. If you love Baroque period music, this CD is a must have. The pieces are absolutely beautiful, and have increased my respect for Albinoni. I plan to listen to more of his work.

Until I bought this CD. I am not quite a novice classical
music lover.
My strong preference is what is called baroque music - and I
would say my attention was mostly on the period 1600- 1775.
I love Bach, Vivaldi all Italian and German composers of this period.
I am really fascinated by this CD and impressed with Albinoni's
talent. Like Vivaldi and Bach he displays a genuine ability to
to play with the music material and to create musical
forms of remarkable purity and and novelty (in his personal
ways).
Although I like - like many others - the first piece on the CD
- I am usually skipping it to reach to my #1 favorite: piece #3:
Concerto op10, No 2. Andante or piece #9: op 10. no 6.
Larghetto.
I would characterize many of the pieces on this CD as
"celestial or heavenly" music. I would recommend this CD
to anybody as the first to choose from among hundreds of other
good baroque ones. At its current price is a formidable
gift for anyone which have a "bone" for classical music - but I
think many others may very well be impressed.
I Solisti Veneti are doing a superb job in interpreting their
Italian ancestor. This CD made me search for some other
Albinoni music and I found another remarkable one:
Albinoni, Oboe Concerti, Op. 9, Nos. 2, 3, 5, 8, 9& 11
published by Naxos with Anthony Camden, The London Virtuosi
and John Georgiadis.
I read a bigraphy of Vivaldi and I used to think that during
his years in Venice (most of his life) he was unrivaled as
a composer. I started to think otherwise after getting better
acquainted with Albinoni. I am looking now for a good Albinoni
biography.
Now one more thought. It is absolutely impressive to search,
discover and get overwhelmed by such musical talent and enjoy
new musical beauty. However, some wise philosopher said that
the single Creator is God and we should not forget that. He
created talented humans and inspired them as he pleased Him.
Isn't this just a way to "Taste and see that the Lord is good"
(Psalm 34.8)? And how can't you give a positive answer after
you listen to celestial pieces #3 and #9 on this CD ? ....

Wonderful to listen to! Sweet, warm, a little melancholy...absolutely beautiful.

A composition of great adagios', this serene and beautiful music is truly for the lover of timeless tranquility. If you like rich harmonies, its a must own!

I purchased this recording many years ago, and since then have come across new information concerning the Famous Adagio in G minor for Violin, Organ and Strings, which opens the CD. Well it's not exactly new information, it was known prior to 1998 when the actual composer of the piece died.

The rest of this story comes from my new blog, ClassicalRap.blogspot.com. I cut out the irrelevant parts and edited the post here.

If it ain't Baroque (Parts One and Two)

...or is it by Albinoni? Well...no. Here's an example of a composer (musicologist) creating works in style's outside his era. This was long attributed to Albinoni, but was actually composed in the 20th Century by Remo Giazotto, a musicologist who studied the works of Albinoni.

So actually, it ain't Baroque.

Which brings up another issue. If it was written and copyrighted by Giazotto sometime in 1949 or 1958, then it is not public domain until the year 2068, which would be 70 years after his death, in 1998.

Also, it's use in Gallipoli is inappropriate (although quite moving and understandable), since in the movie the piece is played on record (Victrola) by an Australian general in his tent prior to the Australians heading to Gallipoli (In Turkey) during World War 1. The scene shifts from his tent to boats full of young soldiers approaching the shores of Gallipoli at night, as the music continues - giving it a haunting resonance as the hell of warfare is seen in lights and heard in canon fire on the distant shore. But the piece was written long after the war was over, so it is impossible that the general would have had a recording. Too bad, because it worked so well. Gallipoli is an example of how a piece of music can be emotionally enhanced by the right imagery. Just thinking about that scene still brings tears to my eyes, and I'm reminded of it every time I listen to the first track on this CD.

First, let's recap what we suspect and/or know...... Giazotto was a musicologist, who studied Albinoni's works. He claimed that he came across a fragment, which contained 5 measures of a bass line from an alleged Albinoni sonata. He claimed that he obtained this fragment from the Saxon State Library in Dresden, which was destroyed during World War II. He claimed that he had transcribed the piece from the fragment, and his transcription was written in 1958. Years later, he admitted that he had written the entire piece based on the 5 measures, and that it did not at all represent anything that Albinoni had written, except his own inspiration from Albinoni's actual works. Also, Giazotto had the piece copyrighted, which would mean that if distributed as Albinoni's with name recognition, he would be able to collect royalties, which apparently he did. I think this is actually rather ingenious if you think about it.

A little Background on my first encounter with this piece: It was back in 1983 when I first saw the film Gallipoli with some friends at a college showing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I remember quite well, because it wasn't in a regular theater setting, but in an auditorium with folded chairs, and my friend brought along a male acquaintance, who very appropriately shed some tears as we were walking out of the auditorium at the end of the film. I've watched the film several times since then. I pretty much paid attention to this piece when I first heard it at that showing. How could one not? The film is a stunning work in itself, and the scene which features the adagio comes just before these young Australian men are to get their feet wet for the first time on the battle fields and in the trenches of World War 1.

So having really been impressed with this piece from the start, I eventually sought it out on CD. I finally found it in a collection of Albinoni adagios (there we go with the continuation of the misattribution) on CD, which is available here at Amazon. And here is an issue that is really interesting; I noticed that among all those adagios by Albinoni, this particular one seemed somewhat out of place. I didn't think much of it, even though it was the only piece on the CD that didn't have an Opus number, and at that time I assumed the reason was because it was either an early piece (unlikely, given that it sounded quite mature compared with some of the other pieces), or that it was a piece published or distributed posthumously. I left it at that, and didn't put much more thought into the piece until I came across information that it was not in fact written by Albinoni, and this displeased me because I had gotten used to it being among my Albinoni tracks. Where was I to place it then? You know I am quite obsessive when it comes to my classical music collection, so these things do matter.

End.

A few things to add. The information concerning Giazotto is now available all over the internet. While this is often how rumors get started, most of the websites that deal exclusively with classical music and classical music history, are saying the same thing - that the piece was misattributed to Albinoni, and was written in the 20th Century by Giazotto. There is further information in the form of a letter concerning Giazotto at Oxford University Music Library. I suspect this letter is the key to the issue, and perhaps the strongest piece of evidence, but I don't have access to the library online. I learned about it from an external link in Wikipedia's article on Giazotto.

It is interesting though, that when I purchased this CD I noticed that the Adagio was strangely out of place with the rest of the music here. If you've noticed this, there's a reason. All of the other adagios are much less complex, and employ a continuous rhythm, while this one has several retards or changes in tempo. The piece is much longer than all of the other pieces at 8 minutes. Also, the choice of instruments seems quite different, and there's no other adagio on the album that has quite the same feel. Giazotto's Adagio has less musical ornamentation than would have been common in the 1700s. The violin solo to me sounds more like it fits in the Romantic era, but that may be due to the performance rather than the composition. They placed it appropriately at the beginning of the CD, because anywhere else, it would have stood out even more. Also, this CD was released prior to the information being widely distributed on the internet. This explains why the adagio was included even though the information was known prior to its release. This also may explain why it was included in Gallipoli as though it had been written so many hundreds of years before. My guess is that because Giazotto was still alive, he was still collecting royalties on it, as he should have. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Overall I enjoy listening to this CD, and I recommend it. It may end up being a collector's item with the inclusion of Giazotto's Adagio, and that, among other reasons, is why I gave it a 5 star rating. I thought the truth about the piece should be known.

This is the cd for a time to read or relax or both. When life gets too rushed or when stress is overwhelming, this is the music for the soul. Soft, quiet and serene. It is a slow journey to fill the heart with melodies to live by and love by.