4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A TREAT FOR EYES AND EARS, November 10, 2000
This review is from: Listen to the Storyteller: A Trio of Tales from Around the World (Hardcover)
Everyone loves a good story, especially when it's related in a spellbinding voice. Add original music composed to enhance the text and you have a captivating feast of words, pictures, and music.
Very much like the beloved children's orchestral piece "Peter and the Wolf," Listen To The Storyteller, the book and CD, are not only enticing introductions for children to classical music but their appeal spans generations.
Inspired by Afro-Caribbean, Celtic, and Native American cultures, this trio of morality folktales takes us on a unique around the world tour. Illustrator Kristen Balouch, a visiting professor at the Pratt Institute, enlivens the text with vibrant collage-like paintings that are as arresting for the eyes as the music is for the ears.
"The Fiddler and the Dancing Witch" with music composed and text narrated by Wynton Marsalis is the story of Simeon, "a hard-headed boy." He lives with his father "in a little village on an island in a deep green sea."
Simeon is fascinated by a fiddle his father plays. And, even though his father cautions him not to touch the musical instrument, the boy rebels, saying "Ears are good for lots of things `sides listenin' to grownups!"
In his father's absence, Simeon takes up the forbidden object only to find that the fiddle has a mind of its own, and Simeon has created more than music - he has made "trouble, trouble, and more trouble!"
On the CD violinist Joshua Bell makes that fiddle sing and soar wildly.
A Celtic story of the triumph of good over evil, "The Face in the Lake" is winningly narrated by Kate Winslett, and music is composed by Patrick Doyle.
This tale takes place a long time ago "when butterflies knew how to sing and the stars whispered to the trees, there lived four siblings who brought forth the seasons to the land."
The beautiful maiden Olwen who ushered in springtime incurred the jealousy of her cold-hearted brother Cruel Winter. He cast a spell upon her, freezing her powers so that there was no spring in the land.
Olwen is rescued from her imprisonment in Winter's icy castle by a small, hunched servant who is then transformed by Olwen's grateful love.
KateWinslett brings charming life to this turn on the frog who became a prince.
As "The Lesson Of The Land" opens "men of the tribe could be heard singing to the Great Mystery and to the spirits of powerful animals, praying to be granted their wisdom."
At dawn three young friends, Eagle Son, Little Bear, and Running Wolf will leave their home to go in search of the wisdom and knowledge of their elders. Regrettably, one of the trio becomes greedy and eats three very large eggs which are found in a nest built of pebbles.
His act, which dishonors the animal spirits, is not only his downfall but jeopardizes the safety of his friends.
Master instrumentalist Edgar Meyer composed the music for this Native American story, and narrator Graham Greene offers the slitheriest, stealthiest serpent imaginable in his dramatic performance.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good music for decent stories, October 14, 2002
This review is from: Listen to the Storyteller: A Trio of Tales from Around the World (Hardcover)
This CD is overall very nice, though the three pieces vary considerably both in style and quality.
"The Lesson of the Land" is set to music that is well done (the highlight being a magnificently soaring trumpet solo which depicts the wheeling flight of an eagle, similar in sound to Copland's "Quiet City"), but the story doesn't really hold together very well. It is never clear exactly why it was wrong for Running Wolf to eat eggs which he found in a nest but it was not wrong later for Little Bear to eat a fish he caught out of a stream.
"The Face in the Lake" is, as a story, better than "Lesson" but still not great. The lesson is clearer - the connection is well made between Jardur's kindness to Olwen and his eventual freeing from Winter's spell, although it would have been good to know more of how he fell under Winter's influence. The music, however, is absolutely delightful. Listen especially for the way the basses emphasize Winslet's introduction of the "warming breeze" of spring at 1:30. Patrick Doyle is, in my view, the most likely candidate to be the heir to John Williams's title as the master of Hollywood music.
The real gem on this disc, though, is "The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch," both set to music and narrated by Wynton Marsalis, who here proves once again that he is much more than a trumpet virtuoso. The dissonant sound of the music at first put me off, but the music has gradually grown on me, to the point that I now truly enjoy it. (It is a strong recommendation that my wife, who does not customarily appreciate dissonance, found the enjoyable colors on Marsalis's strings even before I did.) Marsalis also gives the strongest narrative performance of the three, no doubt assisted by knowing as he performed the narration exactly what the composer had in mind.
Overall, I would recommend this disc to anyone who wants to instill in their children a love of good music. My only other complaint (albeit very minor) is that "Fiddler" is divided into several tracks, while the other two are each only one track; each method of dividing (or not dividing) the music into tracks has its strengths, but it would help for programming the CD player's memory if it were consistently one or the other.
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