Customer Reviews

The Swingle Singers - Bach Hits Back ~ A Capella Amadeus

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Those who remember and enjoyed the Swingle Singers' "do-be-do" take on Bach from years back will enjoy this updated version. Some of the old favorites are here, with a slightly freer approach, along with some new material from both Bach and Mozart. It isn't just scat singing, either. The Singers demonstrate that they can sing the texts of pieces quite well. If you didn't grow up with them, give it a try--it's a great light approach to classical music!

I challenge anyone to listen to the song "Un Aura amorosa" and not be moved. It's absolutely gorgeous.

The Swingle Singers, once again, enchant with their crisp, clear and unaffected voices. No obnoxiously showy vibrato here, but rather blissful blending.

Some of the songs on these albums may seem a bit silly, but they're offset by the wonderful and often intricate harmonies.

Buy this CD-pack!

I was a conductor of Choir, and sometinmes I taught my students many things about a capella. To do so, I had to check many a capella teams' works(especially their CD recordings.) Except some fully-classical-oriented a cappella teams, I concluded that technique of Swingle singers is the best. I know kings singers, the real group, and some other teams are also very nice. However, when we consider the technical difficulties of the works, generally, I can tell you, with my confidence, Swingle singers is the best team I know.
This recording contains two CDs. One is Bach Hits Back, and another is A capella Amadeus. Each sells at more than $$$ each, I know. In this aspect, this recording is very cheap, 'Two for One' price.
The best work I choose is 'Little organ fugue' in Bach Hits Back. You can find the utmost of houman voice in that song. It is almost impossible to make ensemble like that with the speed and the complexity of the fugue. You will love these works, but If you want more popular a capella songs, please check out swingle singer's jazz works, or kings singers' or the real group's popular albumes. However, I suggest you listening these works. You can get the highest reach of art with human voices.

I first heard the album while in a music store; I began to feel an instant hapiness invading the place, filling the air; you're going to love it; I really think it's worth having one and getting the second one for a very special gift. Enjoy!

Felix Mendelssohn said that the music of JS Bach could makes Christianity understandable to anyone. Ward Swingle makes JS Bach understandable to anyone. Regardless of one's taste, it is elevated by this collection. This is captivating, wonderful, fun music. It's perfect to play for your "...no, I don't like classical music" friends. It's like playing the Tocatta and Fugue in Dm and having people say "Hey, that's the music from Rollerball!". If you want a sample of the Swingle Singers or even just some enjoyable music, this is a great buy at this price! Plus they throw in some of Mozart's most beautiful music on this set. If you haven't figured it out, I heartily recommend it.

If you love Bach and are a fan of the Swingle Singers, buy this CD. Fans of the Swingle Singers enjoy them for what they do to music - release it with air and bounce - and their style is perfectly suited for Bach. I couldn't enjoy it more. But the second Cd in this set is their treatment of Mozart, and, for me, it's inconsistent. This is due to the different styles of the two composers and I just think they match up better with Bach. But at this price, I shouldn't be complaining. The first CD alone is worth twice as much. Snatch it up!

If you haven't liked other Swingle Singers CDs, give this one a try. It's got a great vocal jazz quality. If I listen to this CD in the car on the way to work, I end up humming Bach all day long!

If you know the Swingle Singers, you may expect jazzed-up Bach with a rhythm section. Now, don't get me wrong, i like that stuff, too, but that is just clean fun, while this is just Bach. No percussion, no jazzy rythym, just straight unaccompanied Bach. AND IT IS WONDERFUL.
Precise rhythm, clear vocal lines, everything you expect from the Swingles without the jazz. This is a really great album that should be bought by all Swingle lovers and all Bach lovers.
P.S. i bought this cd when it first came out,so I have never even heard the Mozart. With all due deference to fans of the worthy Wolfgang, i have always found the artful Amadeus rather a bore, so I will remain silent about that part of the album. No matter. The Bach alone is worth twice the price, so enjoy. And, hey, the Mozart is a nice bonus.

As time goes by, these recordings seem to become better and better. Fresh, perfect... fantastic CD.

OK, I hoped you'd be intrigued by the title and would read this review to find out more.

This twofer collates two CDs of the Swingle Singers published by Virgin in 1991 ("A Cappella Amadeus - A Mozart Celebration") and 1994 ("Bach Hits Back"). In fact, there is a minor mistery about the latter. Apparently 16 tracks out of the disc's 21 were published earlier, in 1990, on a seemingly self-produced CD, The Bach Album, totalling 41 minutes (if you look carefully at the cover photo of that disc you'll see that there are two tracks 8, corresponding to tracks 7 and 8 of the present CD, "In Dulci Jubilo"). Why the remaining tracks (namely tracks 5, 11, 12, 19 and 20) were not published back then but only in the 1994 Virgin reissue, I don't know. Also, the copyright of 1990 featured on that earlier disc doesn't quite stick with the recording date of V.1991 indicated on this Virgin twofer. So the mystery remains, and I'm not going to buy the earlier disc just to try and solve it.

I've reviewed a lot of recordings by the Swingle Singers lately, both the early ones from the Paris-based group in the 1960s and early 1970s (see my reviews of Jazz Sebastian Bach, Anyone For Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?, Swingling Telemann, Getting Romantic, Concerto D Aranjuez and Les Quatre Saisons) and the later ones by the re-formed and now moved-to-London group (other than these Virgin releases, see the recent Beauty and the Beatbox). I've contended that, beyond the pleasure of any arrangement, enabling you to hear the old, familiar warhorses in a new timbral guise, the special fascination of the Swingle's arrangements and realizations derives from the fact that they elevate to the status of high art what we all do, in a very rudimentary manner and without even thinking about it, walking on the street, washing the dishes, ironing or vacuuming - and, notoriously, showering: humming our favorite tunes. But the Swingles are to our shower humming what a Picasso is to your kid's drawings. And I've also opined that by so doing, they return instrumental music to its very origin and essence: the human voice - as, presumably, all those great composers, Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin and all the others first hummed these tunes for themselves before committing them to the music sheet.

The Mozart album is great, equal to any by the early Swingle group, with a fine choice of Mozart's great hits (Magic Flute Overture, 40th Symphony, Adagio from the 21st Piano Concerto, Turkish finale from the 11th Piano Sonata), the Swingle's customary combination of the dazzlingly virtuosic and the sensuously caressing - and, as a most welcome exception to the Swingle's frustrating rule of recording only excepts from larger works, the complete (if abridged) 40th Symphony. I'd rank the Bach album under that, though. The pieces selected aren't overall as popular hits as those of Mozart - I guess the Swingles had more or less exhausted the available Bach hits in their previous Bach albums. Moreover, I think they made a mistake in choosing to treat the excerpts from the vocal and choral pieces as precisely that: vocal and choral pieces, e.g. with the words sung, rather than "instrumentalizing" them. In some cases they just arrange and sing those as "mere" (if my ears don't deceive me) 4-part a capella choruses, as in the opening "Ein' feste Burg", the Chorale from "Wachet auf" (track 5),the song "Bist du bei mir" from Anna Magdalena's Notebook (track 16; the attribution to Bach is doubtful) or the last verse of "In Dulci Jubilo", track 8, which is in fact straight Bach, a four-part Chorale BWV 368 after the old medieval tune, here sung in the (often criticized) 19th century English translation of Pearsall. I feel that this misses the point entirely of what makes the art of the Swingle Singers so unique: precisely, vocalizing instrumental music, returning it, as I said, to its vocal essence and origin. Here, they don't sound so unique, but just like any good a capella ensemble. The Choral-prelude from "Wachet auf" (track 4), and "Sheep may safely graze" (track 11) are fortunately more elaborate and "swingling" that that, but the two exceptions to that "singing" rule are "Et Resurrexit" from the Mass in B-minor (track 15) and "Blute nur" from the St Matthew Passion (track 17), both entirely "instrumentalized", and it comes as no surprise that they are both very effective.

And here's the explanation for the provocative title of my review. Admittedly, there is also some word-singing in the Mozart album - but then, in the excerpts from the Requiem, Cosi and Don Giovanni, the Swingles also vocalize for the orchestra, so it's still typical Swingle rather than anonymous a capella, although their Ave Rerum Corpus can attract the same kind of comment. But that's only one track.

In this twofer reissue Virgin isn't very helpful either with information on the compositions. The liner notes are much shorter and not nearly as informative as on the original CDs, and no BWV numbers are given for the Bach selections, making it sometimes difficult to locate them. I had to do more than a little research to establish what exactly were tracks 7 and 8. I've indicated above what track 8 is, and as for track 7, it turns out that Virgin mislabelled it. It is not the Chorale prelude on "In dulci jubilo" - in fact Bach wrote two, BWV 729 and 751, although the latter is apparently dubious, if the excellent Wikipedia entry is to be trusted - but the Chorale (not prelude) BWV 608 (the arrangement is a little more complicated than that, but for the complete details see my review of the original Virgin release).

Whatever my misgivings, the twofer is still very attractive, especially at the cheap prices which are asked for it at the time of writing. The Mozart is great and the Bach, while not the best from the Swingles, is still very enjoyable.