5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Twilight Hour, September 14, 2006
This review is from: NightMoods: Twilight Hour (Audio CD)
This cd is for easy listening. Great music to listen to before going to bed. Opens the mind and relaxes the body. I also highly recommend Moonlight and Night Wanderer as an addition to this cd.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5.0 out of 5 stars
Contains a rare gem of a performance., October 7, 2011
This review is from: NightMoods: Twilight Hour (Audio CD)
The CD is one of the best "relaxation" compilations of quiet classics ever released by Deutsche Grammophone. Lush, sweet, and whether your thing is port wine or warm milk, every single selection on this disc is great performance of each repective work by various composers. But what makes this an absolute STEAL and somewhat of a collector's item is the Lark Ascending. Composer is Ralph Vaughan Williams. There are many recorded versions available with performances by a variety of fine English Ensembles. But none of those other performances come close to the magic of The English Chamber, Pinchas Zukerman on violin, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. Unless you can get hold of the original vinyl release in 1975, on a CD complitation album entitled Greensleeves, it is hard to get a read on exactly when this track was recorded or any information on the original sessions. But to my ears, this version of the Lark Ascending is the most beautiful piece of music ever recorded. Period. Lark is a tone poem for solo violin, and with Zukerman's violin playing the lark, you feel the quiet beauty, the serenity, almost as if the lark is a musical analogy of the soul transcending the confines of earth and reaching for the divine. Vaughan Williams only came close to achieving this effect in one other piece - the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for string orchestra.
Get this CD, and if you can, the original album is available from another retailer as a CD-ROM. Not ideal, but hearing this piece in it's original DG context will just blow you away.
With the other recordings on this set, you can't pass the one up. Highly recommend.
PS. The listings for the samples are out of order, and titles do not match the actual sound samples. To hear Lark click on the link one above. And the composer obviously isn't Bach on every track.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
