Customer Reviews

Crazy

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There's a freshness and excitement about the way these people play that you forget you're listening to 17th Century chamber music. It has been the most played CD in our house since we bought it and it doesn't get old. My wife has instructed me to buy another one of their CD's.

The premise of this disc is that all the pieces on it are either the products of a disturbed mind or the expression of deep regret, passion or rage. So there's a mixed bag, from Marco Uccellini's (c. 1603-1680) Sonata detta la Luciminia Contenta (which, according to the liner notes, "expresses a wild and manic sort of happiness") to Francesco Maria Veracini's (1690-1768) Passagallo from Sonata 12 in d minor (included because Veracini was "nuttier than a meatloaf") to Lysander I Pursue by John Blow (1649-1708). All are either small-ensemble instrumental works or songs for solo soprano. The program ends with modern Canadian folksinger Leonard Cohen's Suzanne--a song about Cohen's friend who "was hovering on the brink of sanity."
These kinds of compilations can make for interesting concert programs, but as recordings they are not always successful. There are many other recordings of all the works here, mostly done a lot better, so there is no reason to buy this CD. It's not that there's anything particularly bad about the performances; they're just not particularly good, either. This is especially true of soprano Garbrielle McLaughlin, who tends to fight with the music: Every time she reaches an especially dramatic passage that requires her to raise the volume or go up the scale, her voice takes on a harsh tonal quality with a squeak on top.
The group's record label, Dorian, has decided to no longer offer liner notes except on its web site. So the disc itself comes in a cardboard pack with a play list printed on the back and the personnel printed on the inside cover and no other information at all.
When you get to the web site, the notes are offered in two versions--one suitable for viewing on your computer screen and one laid out as a sort of arts and crafts project that you can print out, cut out, staple and then tuck into the cardboard pack. I downloaded and read both. To my surprise, they were not the same. The arts and crafts version contained information about one composer that was not in the on-screen version, while the on-screen version had a general statement of the CD concept and information about Cohen's song that was not in the arts and crafts version. Neither presented the lyrics of the songs in the same order on which they appear in the CD, and neither appeared to have been proofread.
It's a risky move to offer classical music without liner notes (nobody needs to read the notes for a Justin Timberlake CD, but one of the few reasons left to buy classical CDs rather than download the music straight from the Internet is to get the notes). If you're going to commit to it, at least get it right.