Customer Reviews

Smile

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

 

 

Anne Akiko Meyers new CD 'Smile' is an wonderful tour of the world of song. From her readings of two great standadrds, Smile from the film Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin and Somewhere over the Rainbow by Harold Arlen from the Wizard of Oz to her duplicating bird songs in Messiaen's Fantasie to the Japanese folksongs that she arranged herself. Ms. Meyer's tone has always been luminous but her new 1730 Stradivarius violin (The Royal Spanish) adds a dark timbre to the bottom of each note. It's almost like listening to a new violinist.

The centerpiece of the recording is the Schubert Fantasie that is flanked on either side by the songs. As Schubert composed hundreds of songs (Lieder) that charactersitic is what Meyers brings to this excellent performance.

It is almost as if Anne Akiko Meyers is embarking on a mew career as aviolinist and has decided that she won't be held in by any arbitrary boundaries out on her musically. I love this CD and I have not stop playing it since I got it. I heartily recommend this CD.

This album is superior in too many ways to list! The performances here are so intimate and warm. There's a personal nature to this recording that at times I felt like I peering through the window into Anne's soul. The quality of the audio on this disc is superior to many other violin recitals -- the crisp, clean sound of the instruments jumps through the speakers. Highly highly recommended.

Anne Akiko Meyers's album
opens with Charlie Chaplin's Smile
and ends with `Somewhere over the
Rainbow'; along the way Japanese
folksong is set alongside Pärt,
Piazzolla and Messiaen. At its heart
is the great Schubert Fantasy, D934,
rapt and almost heartbreaking at the
start, Akira Eguchi's accompanying
tremolando exquisitely judged; but
what follows relocates Schubert
towards the end of the 19th
century. Yet Meyers's beautiful
sound and control pay dividends in
Pärt's crystalline Spiegel im Spiegel.
4 STARS

This gal is great. I've seen her live in a relatively small venue and she was phenomenal. She was a child prodigy and has sustained her playing ability. She is on a CD with Perlman and Zukerman which should indicate how she ranks with the best in the business.

This is positively an amazing album. The quality of the sound is very pure and soft. Miss Meyer's choice of composers where very subtle, still very well chosen: it's like all the musics relate to each other, and, at the same time, we feel a different emotion and/or sensation each time we listen to the album.
Has for the quality of the delivery, it was very quick, and it came has if I bought it on that moment on a music store.
Congratulations to Miss Meyer's for this amazing masterpiece. and for Amazon, for being able to provide such fine article.