Customer Reviews

Classical Album

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

 

 

I purchased this album because I was a fan of Arturo's jazz music. I was astonished by his diversity. He handles some of the most challenge classical trumpet parts ever written with ease. The London Symphony Orchestra does a wonderful job backing Sandoval's powerful trumpet playing. I am a trumpet player, so I especially appreciate Arturo's talent, but all listeners of classical music will love this album for its beauty alone. One of the greatest living trumpet players playing some of the greatest songs ever written. His own concerto is brilliant, especially considering his afro-cuban jazz roots. His cadenzas also add to these masterpieces. A must for the classical or trumpet fan.

I bought this CD when it came out in 1994 and when I got it home, I thought it stunk.

11 years later, I still think it stinks but I just can't bring myself to get rid of it. It's reminiscent of the late Al Hirt tackling the Haydn Trumpet Concerto with the Boston Pops. Bold, yet a bit unrefined. Colourful, yet really, really ugly.

Recording quality: good

Repertoire: fair

Performance: bad

This was a sad atempt to introduce Mr. Sandoval to the roll of classical trumpet players. He is indeed a master technician of the instrument but has no understanding of interpretation in Baroque and Classical periods.

All the concertos (except his own) are totaly out of the right dinamics, tonguing, articulations, slurs, and vibrato. This last item (the vibrato) plays an important role in ones interpretation. Mr. Sandoval uses it as he was playing popular Cuban music. His articulation and tonguing are extremely heavy, giving the pieces a too much marcial style rather than a delicate solo part. There are too many bad things in this recording, but I won't list all of them.

This album should go togheter with his Trumpet Method, which is another unsucessful atempt.

I would not recommend this recording to anyone seriously interested in trumpet playing. This CD is surely for fans only.

It's no secret that Arturo is one of the best trumpet technicians there is. He has unbelievable technique, a great sound, great range, and he's also an exciting player period. His first classical outing has some moments of greatness that most orchestral players would probably envy, however, there are also some bad moments on this album. Arturo easily has the technique to play through these pieces, which he handles as if they were child's play. However, his interpretation is off in certain places. Arturo plays with the Russian classical style, largely because he studied with a Russian teacher in his younger days (or so I'm assuming). That works pretty well for him on the "Arutuinian Concerto", which was written by Armenian composer Alexander Arutuinian. While Arturo's is not quite as good as Sergei Nakariakov's or Timofey Doksheizer's (which is nothing no feel ashamed of), his articulation is accurate and his sound stays good throughout. He also plays very well on the Leopold Mozart Concerto For Trumpet in D. He plays it very smoothly and sounds very effortless. This is a great piece also. His Hummel recording is fine until he gets to the third movement. He played it so loud! I love Arturo, but someone should've told him this isn't merengue, it's Hummel. He adds the latin flavor brilliantly in the second movement which was very passionate and romantic as it should sound. Also, his cadenza on the first movement knocked me out, and he played the first movement pretty well. His last piece is pretty bad, however. It's not a great composition, and sounds pretty shlocky. Arturo tried to go into new ground, and it didn't really work at all.

Overall, it's not Arturo's best work. His classical playing improved a lot more on the Trumpet Evolution album. It was more tasteful. Arturo should have played more tastefully on some of the movements. Other than that, he did pretty well, and it's not fair to knock him completely for this album, because overall it's not bad, it just has some bad parts.

I wish Amazon had a half star rating ability, because my overall rating of this album = 3.5 stars.