Customer Reviews

Pieces for Lute

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

 

 

This brief review is a comment on the recorded sound. A note by O'dette inserted into the booklet explains the circumstances under which this recording was made. An earthquake forced a last minute change of recording location, to the historically suitable, but unfortunately acoustically less suitable, Castello Piccolomini in Capestrano. O'dette remarks: "While the acoustics of the Castello are perhaps more reverberant than one is accustomed to hearing on lute recordings it is nevertheless a venerable edifice that Marco may well have known, and it lends a special air of historical presence to the sound."

Unfortunately this is a bit of an understatement. Even if you don't insist on a dry, neutral acoustic for lute, the reverb here really is out of control. Many tracks end with a noticeable abrupt attenuation that cuts off what would clearly be several seconds of decaying sound. Much of the playing, though wonderful as always from O'dette, is an unpleasant jumble of sound. Perhaps I'm just naive about the logistics and constraints of classical music recordings, but it is hard to believe that a one-man, one-lute recording project could not have been rescheduled so as to find a suitable location. This music deserved better from Harmonia Mundi.

... and infinitely more full of life than either of the other renditions of dall'Aquila's works I've listened to. A little echo-ey indeed, but O'Dette seems determined to play these pieces like he's on fire and I found the performances riveting. Maybe you need to come at this from something other than a digitized sterile recording studio, an aesthetic that seems to infuse most classical reviews. I prefer live recordings almost always to studio jobs. Even Knappertsbusch's live Ring cycles from the 50's and 60's will get me on my feet and soaring more than any more polished studio version. Give me Miles, 'Trane, King Crimson naked and alive, and I'm a happy boy.
In this case, dall'Aquila's music in a church seems to fill the sound out, rather than something pristine and perfect. O'Dette is such a master that he commits his whole heart to this effort and i can hear it and I'm thrilled. Take off points if you can't dig being where an artist is working without a net, but I'll play this a lot in the years ahead.

The sound of this CD is the worst I have ever heard for a solo lute recording. That it is a Paul O'Dette performance that is so disfigured by the engineering makes this all the more disastrous. The confusion of the sound amidst the shockingly bad reverberation makes this CD almost unlistenable in my opinion. This will be the first O'Dette recording to be excluded from my collection. Dire.

This is really quite beautiful. It does have a lot of echo and reverb, and I believe that is because it was recorded in a space in L'Aquila, Italy after the earthquake. Once you get used to the sound, and accept it for what it is, it is as seductively lovely as any recording in Paul O'Dette's vast repertory.

I write this because I am disgusted at the way the previous reviewers would jeopardise sales for a lute CD - A LUTE CD!! Its not as if lute music needs any more adversity to survive in this business. And they do this purely on the basis of a sound that they find hard to get used to.

This is, I think, the key phrase - the sound takes time to get used to, but it is well worth the effort, and the playing is divine. The accoustic does blur some of the intricacies of the countrepoint and it favours atmosphere over detail - but if you have one cd in your collection that does this, (and to great effect too, albet a different effect from say, O'dette's earlier Francesco disk) what is the harm?

The only harm is done by irresponsible reviewers like the previous two, who feel their opinions are more important than the cd-sales of a fine artist working in an extremely perilous comercial environment.