The Alternative Schubertiade

Various Composers (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Various Composers
• Audio CD (May 18, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Composers Recordings
• ASIN: B00000IYO7
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,597 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Downtown composers on a bad day, February 24, 2001

By 

J. Matthys "wayfaring sailor" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Alternative Schubertiade (Audio CD)

When I first picked up this recording at a used-CD shop, I thought I had made a rare find, as I am a great fan of the post-minimal downtown music movement. Modern composers as a rule tend to despise Schubert and his overt sentimentalism (I include myself in that group), and I was curious to see if the Downtowners could somehow translate the unrestrained romanticism into fresh statements for our times.

Nope. The quality of the pieces consists of a couple of fairly good pieces, a few so-so, and quite a few very bad ones.

The most successful works on the CD are the minimal treatments of Schubert themes by David First, Roger Kleier, and Annie Gosfield. Also noteworthy is "Das Morgenholz" by Gordon Minette, a colorful piano four-hand work that bears an at best tangential relation to Schubert.

Phil Kline's piece "Franz In The Underworld" is a potentially fine piece, but it is marred by a stiff sequencer-realized performance.

Particularly awful are a song cycle by Jon Bepler, Nick Didkovsky's computerized Nancarrow-ish rearrangement of the Impromptu in Eb Major, which sounds like a computer with a broken MIDI interface, and an odd and unpleasant Schubert Dance Mix by someone called DJ Firehorse!

This CD sunk into the depths of my collection some time ago, and I recently revived it to find if there was any potential for it beyond use as a coaster. I eventually decided to keep it, thanks to two tracks, David First's "Thought You Said Sherbet" and Gordon Minette's "Das Morgenholz."

Fans of the downtown music scene would be better off looking at the "Bang On A Can" collections than these very sub-standard works.