Customer Reviews

String Quart Tribute to Van Morrison

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If you love Van Morrison's music, it will be impossible for you not to enjoy this CD.

Being a hardcore Van's fan, I took it as a duty to buy this album. Not that I'm against this cross-over idea nor I dislike String Quartet music in general. Only when you like a musician so much, you're always a bit wary towards reinterpretation of his music. Of course many have covered Van's songs so far and some have done a pretty good job (Bobby McFerrin's Moondance being an apt example), but this is an altogether different affair. The result, if not extraordinary as one would hope, is highly listenable and consistent. It demonstrates that Van's forte is not only is other-worldy voice, but also all the other aspects of his music. When a song of any genre is "classically" treated, the result may be double-edged, embellish it on one side with clever orchestration but also ruthlessly reveal the compositional shortcomings. I'm therefore happy to note that Van's songs come out as good as possible after the "washing", at times attaining a true symphonic value and what is someway surprising is that the uptempo numbers work as good as the ballads which were easier targets and in some cases already included strings in the original arrangement. Good on whoever selected the tracks that managed to go a bit ahead of the first albums, including at least two tracks which are more recent and well-suited for teh project. Moondance (the album) gets the lion's share, personally I would have ravaged more Astral Weeks or Veedon Fleece, but I'm not complaining, I enjoyed the album pretty much and would recommend it to Van's lovers who also like instrumental music.

My husband and I love Van Morrison so I was thrilled to find versions of his songs that I could incorporate into our wedding ceremony. I walked down the aisle to Tupelo Honey and it was perfect!