Customer Reviews

Sarah Chang: Selections

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Chang is so very talented and accomplished for her young years. This album is a delight to the ears (and to the pocketbook!). The selections show her ability well -- she plays with passion and depth. This one is a winner.

I appreciate Amazon's generosity (and that of the artists and publishers) in making great music available at no cost. Like others, I've bought "regular" albums as well, and the samples have often been the determining factors in my choices.

What a pleasant surprise! Before this download, I had never listened to Sarah Chang. This is an excellent sampler - she plays in a very spirited, energetic way and brings some personality to the music. I usually find Classical music boring and mechanical. Sarah Chang does classic songs in a way that feels fresh, yet still maintains the dignity of the music. Music that even non-classical music fans will enjoy! This sampler did exactly what it was supposed to do, got me interested enough to download more of her music.

I love the weekly free downloads from Amazon, and this is a particularly good one. I've found some good music, and I order albums from Amazon frequently enough as a result.

This particular offering worked fine for me. I did NOT have to submit a CC to make the download, but Amazon's already got my data in their servers.

Having said that, two 'FREE' downloads last week ended up being billed at their sale price, about $5 total. I emailed Amazon customer support and they DID promptly take off the charges, so no harm done.

BUT... check your receipt when it comes in. Anything can happen!

I can tell by listening her music that she is a perfectionist. She never even misses one note. In every detail, I can feel her effor to brush out every corner of the piece of music that she plays. I see it as a respect towards the composer. It makes her performance soundes so clean and perfect. I like it that way.

I enjoy putting on this music when I am cooking or trying to relax. It's so enjoyable!

This is a great sampler of violin music. I really enjoy listenning to it every now and then at work when I get tired of listening to the same stuff on the radio.

I did not have any trouble downloading these free tracks. I'm listening to them now and they are beautiful and very enjoyable. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable about music will review after me, I just wanted folks to know that the download is working.

Sarah Chang is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists in the history of recorded music. She began her recording career with EMI at the age of nine as the featured artist on an album aptly entitled "Debut". EMI is one of the better record labels for classical music. If not for her photo on the cover of that album, you would never guess in a million years someone that young could possible play with such maturity and perfection on a challenging selection of popular violin showpieces. For anyone interested in hearing more of Sarah beyond the free samples offered here, that album would be as good a starting point as any. Even though the critics, who are much more qualified than I to make such evaluations, all seem to agree that her playing has improved over the years, when listening to that album today, a full 17 years since I bought it, it still sounds like absolute perfection to my ears. (Actually, it sounds even better now due to improvements in CD players since then.)

Even though this excellent music sampler is offered here for free, and every Sarah Chang performance I have heard to date deserves 5 stars, I am compelled to give it a four star rating strictly due to the limitations in resolution inherent with the lossy mp3 format. Classical music is perhaps the last of the musical genres that has not yet succumb to the modern trend of over-compression during mastering (Google "loudness wars") and other compromises in sound being made to the typical popular music release these days. The standards that most classical labels still adhere to in an effort to bring us the best possible sound should not be undermined by retailers who limit it's availability in the digital domain to lossy formats. The consumer should always have the option, as they do on many other websites, of downloading lossless FLAC or AIFF files if they wish. I'm not knocking people who are perfectly happy listening exclusively to mp3s. It's not a "bad" format, it's simply not the "best" format. What I am saying is that for those of us who at least "think" we can discern the difference in certain listening environments, Amazon should give us a choice, especially with classical recordings of substantial merit such as this one.

How come the so called "free downloads" require you to use a credit card to download?

Phishing? Says it is free and then you get the purchase window. Credit Card anyone? No free lunch. Sounds great, and it is classical. But no freebee on this one.