Customer Reviews

Michael Nyman: Songbook / Ute Lemper

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

 

 

Combine Paul Celan, Ute Lemper and Michael Nyman and what do you get. Pure genius of course. Chanson einer Dame im Schatten was a great poem. It is an unbelievable song. I own over 500 CDs. This is one of my favorite ones.

Every few months, I query Amazon to see if there is any new Ute Lemper CD. I have seen no new releases for several years. If today you sorted by release date, you would find "Punishing Kiss" at the top (2011), but the original release date was in 2000. This album is next, but it was originally copywrited in 1991. I began listening to it and was immediately disappointed. The audio mixing seemed very poor. There was no clarity in distinguishing Fraulein Lemper's voice from the orchestra. I know German fairly well, and I had trouble making out the words.

To make a fair comparison, I listened to her recording of Berlin Cabaret songs, in German, and the difference was striking. The band is chrisp, but neatly separated from the voice. This may partly be due to the smaller "Cabaret" style Matrix Ensemble collection of maybe five instruments plus piano versus Nyman's "Orchestra"

I bought this only because I am so enamoured of Lemper's work that I will snap up anything she does. But this is certainly among the weakest of the German language recordings. Note there are some tracks in English, but they are no clearer.