Customer Reviews

Instruments of the Orchestra

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've listened to classical music for years and am interested in composition. I bought this CD set to learn how an orchestra and its instruments work. I thought the CDs would be a nice but boring lecture. They aren't! Not only are they FUN but they are informative as well. I learned a huge amount from each CD and couldn't wait to listen to the next one.

The narrator and writer is a great speaker and holds your attention well. He is definitely knowledgeable. He provides musical examples for each point he makes, so you get to "hear" what he just talked about. I'd say the CDs are about 65% music and 35% narration. You'll learn about the range of instruments, some history, different ways to play them, how they sound, and how they are used in the orchestra. This CD set was a great learning experience and is sold at such a low price!

I recommend this CD for those who want to learn about classical music and those who know about it but are interested in learning more about the inner workings of an orchestra. You'll learn much useful information. For instance, the Rite of Spring (with that eerie start) is written for bassoon! I never knew a bassoon could sound like that but now I do.

The one complaint I have is the last CD. This deals with the orchestra. I wanted more of a tour of how the orchestra has been used through history up to the present. Instead, it was a tour of how different groups of instruments sound. I thought it could have been better. The other 6 CDs are excellent.

Whether you're a music novice or pro, "The instruments of the Orchestra" is a very worthwhile purchase. The 7 CDs, with a total of 8 hours, are expertly narrated by Jeremy Siepmann. He's a great speaker, very much like the late Leonard Bernstein was. Mr. Siepmann takes you on an unforgetable musical journey covering the origins and use of the various orchestral instruments throughout musical history. The balance between his narration and a wealth of musical examples, which range from snippets to entire movements, is superb. The comprehensive enclosed booklet is excellent and faithfully follows the 7 CDs in content. Even with my 40+ years of music training I still learned new things from this wonderful collection. Considering the excellence of the content, and a cost that translates to about $5 per disc, this collection is a great value. Grab it, you won't regret that you did. Five solid stars!

As a music educator, I've found the recorded excerpts to be wonderfully and logically organized and presented. I've always been an instrumental music teacher only, but find myself teaching general music classes this year, and absolutely love what I've used so far. The last disc alone shows the fascinating evolution of the modern orchestra. Every other track is narrative text, the script of which is printed in the booklet, and I present that info myself, modifying as needed and answering questions during that time. I've only skimmed the other information from the booklet on my own, and look forward to reading and learning more! I'll be buying another copy of Instruments of the Orchestra for my school to own in the near future.

This set lends itself to greatly enhancing one's knowledge of the orchestra, instruments in it, and their usage. I am a huge music buff, and I still picked up a great deal I previously did not know. I highly recommend this for all who wish to understand the origin of music, as well as the processes that are employed to create music!

This CD is excellent for the beginner or expert! To be able to haear the instrumets separately and then together really provides a good education. and/or refresher. The book thaty comes with the CD is alomost worth the price by itself!

I just listen to music, don't play an instrument or read music. This set greatly helped me know just WHAT was making the sounds I heard, and what the various instruments are capable of doing and the range they have. I still can't distinguish a violin from a viola very well---but I'm getting better. Overall I'm quite satisfied and plan to see if my grandchildren are interested.

The intent and general content of THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA is made abundantly clear by a perfectly self-explanatory title. But, as always, the devil is in the details and Jeremy Siepmann is a past master at providing stellar commentary when it comes to "high brow" music, musical criticism, musical instruction, theory and history. His wonderful narration of THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA will make any classical music lover a more informed, more active and more appreciative listener of the music we already love.

Breaking down the typical orchestra into significant sections - strings, woodwinds, horns, brass and percussion - Siepmann provides a detailed explanation of the range, timbre, character and history of each instrument within a section. Most classical music lovers, for example, are probably already aware that the string section consists of the violin, the viola, the cello and the double bass. But many people may not be aware of the myriad of methods of playing each instrument and the use of such embellishments as muting, tremolo, harmonics and double stopping, for example. Siepmann's extraordinarily informative lessons even provide insight into how the instruments and the various playing techniques have evolved in time and how composers have changed the use and the intent of the instrument over time in the orchestration of their scores.

And, of course, what would such a set of lessons be without examples? Siepmann has done himself proud illustrating every point with absolute clarity giving the listener a musical example ranging in length from a few bars to entire movements. It is worth observing that a whirlwind tour of the orchestra completed in this fashion, if you change your perspective only slightly, amounts to a whirlwind tour of the entire history of orchestral music. Absolutely fascinating!

On a completely personal level, I took special delight in the percussion section. From guns to whips, snare drums to sandpaper, typewriters to tambourines, tympany and triangles, blocks and maracas to chains and wind machines, the ingenuity of composers knows no bounds in its attempt to create sounds to accompany music.

Having de-constructed the orchestra, Siepmann concludes THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA by re-building the orchestra one piece at a time to show how sound builds from duets to trios to quartets to ensembles to orchestras that are so massive as to beggar the imagination. Last but not least, he provides food for thought. As computers and synthesized sound come closer and closer to replicating any sound of any quality, any pitch, any duration, any timbre and any character, is it possible that our world faces the extinction of the reality of a symphonic orchestra?

If you love music, you will love THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA.

Paul Weiss

Very well done. Great examples for all instruments, amusing but accurate commentary. I have bought 3 so far for friends and one for me.

My intensions and expectations in purchasing this set were:

(a) Obtain the ability to identify instruments by their sounds.
(b) The opportunity to perceive various sounds & colors of different musical instruments.
(c)Compare instruments sounds one against the other.
(d) Exposure to new instruments and to those one rarely hears.

Expectation were only partly met for the following reasons:

1-The Woodwind and the Brass instruments CDs are unfriendly organized, which may cause difficulties for the beginner listener. In its FIRST demonstration an instrument should appear as solo, preferably in a concerto which not only isolate the instrument but also enables to emphasize the sound's versatility produced by a virtuoso player. Solo demonstration makes it easier to follow ,study and remember the instruments sound for future references. Unfortunately some of the woodwinds (CD# 3), and brasses (CD # 4) are demonstrated with orchestral background which overshadows the demonstrated instrument's sound, i.e.: CD 3 tracks 3/20 oboe, 3/26 cor anglais, 3/66 bassoon also in CD 4: 4/22 trombone and 4/26 trombone B flat . If one is unfamiliar with the demonstrated sound, it's a difficult and frustrating task to "dig out" the relevant sound from the orchestral background. The tasks' becomes more difficult when dominant instruments play simultaneously with the demonstrated; as in 3/28 cor anglais and French horn, and in 3/45 French horn, saxophone and tuba. Go and guess "who is who?" With better presentation this difficulty could have been avoided.



2-Performers are not the top of the line neither are some choices of the musical pieces. A vast educational project such as this set, calls for the best performers and the best musical compositions; yet the prominent violinist virtuoso Perlman and the outstanding violin concertos of Beethoven and Mendelssohn are not included. It caused me to wonder. Could it be that the financial considerations left behind the educational purpose and this set serves as a mean for advertizing Naxos CDs?
After all the source of the musical pieces chosen are solely from Naxos company.


3- The booklet is informative, but has a main drawback: the CD's number is not mentioned on the tracking list pages. Hence if one whish to compare sounds it becomes a chore to brows the tracking list back and forth in order to find the relevant instrument. Listing the CD's number ,on top or bottom of the track list pages, would have eliminated the search chore.


Though imperfect this set is educational, the music is enjoyable, there are some treats as presentation of uncommon musical instruments in the percussion and interlopers CDs ( 5 & 6).

This boxed set of CD's with booklet achieved all I had hoped that it would. There are good samples of individual instruments and well done commentary on each. The only drawback was that some of the samples were too brief and could have been longer, hoiwever I guess this fits in with time constraints of the medium. It has given me a lot of clues as to future purchases of CD's for listening to individual instruments. Altogeth a satisfactory purchase and a welcome addition to my collection.