The Essential Michael Nyman Band [Import]

Michael Nyman (Artist), Sarah Leonard (Artist), Linda Hirst (Artist), Clare Conners (Artist), David Roach (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 19, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Decca Import
• ASIN: B000004CVW
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,923 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New versions of soundtrack favorites, September 17, 1998

By 

Scott Andrew Hutchins (Bronx, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Michael Nyman Band (Audio CD)

Music from Peter Greenaway's films is the subject of this release. All of the works were newly recorded in 1992, often in strikingly different arrangements from their soundtrack counterparts. There is a completely new section in the Purcell-inspired "Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds," and "An Eye for Optical Theory," has gone from pulsating clarinet-based drawing music to a choreography upbeat tune, with the clarinet part shifted to saxophone, and the saxophone part shifted to piano. The saxophone makes much greater appearance on the album than on the soundtrack versions, replacing the violin melody on "Time Lapse." "Miranda" has the violin and viola parts done by soprano and mezzo-soprano vocalists. The major casualty of the disc is "Water Dances." It includes "Gliding," rather than "Stroking," as it indicates, and the sax blares over everything, particularly the strong brass section near the beginning of "Synchronizing." But perhaps that's merely a matter of taste. Not a replacement for the original soundtracks, but as essential to any music library as the title suggests.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Prawns, July 13, 2000

By 

Mr. A. Pomeroy (Wiltshire, England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Essential Michael Nyman Band (Audio CD)

This is an odd greatest hits / remix collection of Michael Nyman's soundtrack music for Peter Greenaway's films, plus two tracks from 'Water Dances' (which are not otherwise available in orchestrated form). Similar in concept to Kraftwerk's 'The Mix', the music has been re-arranged in a generally bouncier, upbeat style to the original - whilst 'Chasing Sheep' has a new, sad-sounding middle-eight, 'Wheelbarrow Walk' is utterly jolly, and the transition from the calmness of the first 'Water Dance' to the frenzy of the last (sounding rather like an Elmer Bernstein western movie score) is amusing. The music from 'The Cook', on the other hand, is uniformly doom-laden, fitting the humourless tone of the film quite well, whilst the single extract from 'Prospero's Books' seems to meander a lot without going anywhere. It's a great introduction / compilation of his pre-Hollywood score music, and along with the soundtrack to 'Drowning by Numbers' is an essential Michael Nyman purchase.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Sampler, and the Best Place to Start, January 24, 2006

By 

Chris Ward (Costa Rica) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Essential Michael Nyman Band (Audio CD)

If you're unfamiliar with Nyman and want a broad overview of his best work, I'd start here. I actually WORE OUT a copy of this and recently bought another. When it arrived, I played it over and over-- Nyman's almost creepily insistent and precise compositions will appeal to those who appreciate minimalism and repetition in the music of other composers such as John Adams, Steve Reich, Michael Torke, and Philip Glass.