Customer Reviews

Andersen's Fairy Tales 2CD

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

 

 

This 2CD set contains some of Andersen's best fairy tales, from Emperor's Clothes (how did the guy come up with such a fabulous satire?) to the sad Little Match Girl (it always drives me to tears). It's well read by an English voice actress. The longer stories are broken into separate tracks -- this is just very thoughtful and useful, unlike some fairy CDs that put all the stories on one single track. The producers should be lauded for this nice, common-sense feature.

Two issues: (1) Minor: the accent is British English which I love but which may annoy some American parents; (2) Major: the mastering volume was set to way too low. I turned the volume on my Cambridge Soundworks hi-fi to 85% or more and it barely sounds okay. I'm a classical music aficionado and usually I set the volume at about 40-45% even for the quietest piano or oboe solo works, so the fact I had to crank up the volume all the way to max speaks volumes about the poor mastering of the CD.

But at such a low price, this CD set is a bargain and I really love the stories. I guess I'll get a nice amplifier in the future anyway.

The original stories are beautiful. But the performer tried to abridge them and the recording is terrible.