Customer Reviews

Uccellini - Sonatas / Romanesca - Manze · North · Toll

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

 

 

Just purchased this recording and have listened to Manze & his colleagues perform these somewhat 'obscure' Baroque works - the playing and sound quality are excellent; others have already made positive extensive comments, which I can only add support. Plus, Manze's liner notes are quite instructive (could have been longer!). Please ignore that 1* review - just cannot understand the rating?

For another 'professional' review, checkout David Vernier on ClassicsToday:

http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=138

This CD was a wonderful surprise! It is very beautiful, a kind of delicate beauty as opposed to a more romantic beauty. The most surprising aspect of the music for me is the way it sounds like some of the music written in the early 20th century with its dissonance and strange transitional rhythmns. I like 16th century, Italian violin and chamber music and this composer compliments the music of Corelli and Vivaldi in interesting ways.

Marco Uccellini (1603-1680) is much less known and popular than other composers of Baroque era. Records of Baroque music itself differs - the success of it depends on performer: you could get either a kind of hard-rock style classical music or romantic poetical opuses which would express delicatest feelings and emotions.
Trio ROMANESCA "always produce revitalizing, edge-of-your-chair music". With the sounds of violin, harpischord, organ, theorbo, Baroque guitar ROMANESCA created live, luminious, emotional, relaxing sound world. It is a pleasure to return there.
There is St.Petersburg Baroque Trio by V.Shulyakovsky. I heard their CD "Italian Violin Music of the 17th Century" with the music by Uccellini and I was sure that they are the best performers of his music.
Now I`m not so sure...

So if you like light sentimental romantic Baroque music for relaxation - this CD by ROMANESCA is your choice!

And don`t pay much attention to guy above me who recommends you to buy CD by his favourite performer and avoid ROMANESCA.
His likes or dislikes - are his own problems. Make your own choice!!! We are simple listeners and when we are listening to CD - the music is interesting for us, not discussions of musicologists...
By the way, why not to buy both CDs and compare the quality of playing?

I was very impressed with the Biber cd by Romanesca. This one is almost as good. Four and one half stars

I amble through this game called life. I attempt to recognize and complete it by listening to the sonorous melodic sounds of beautiful tones. Man's feeble attempt to honor wholly our existence in the only way we imagine we can.

In this journey, I came upon this astounding Harmonia Mundi release [can 'they' (Harmonia Mundi) magnificently capture the feeling at times?]
I implore all to buy this disc. This is entertainment at its very finest, no matter the "age."

Long before the conveniences of today, there was Baroque.

A wealthy patron perhaps demanded a poor scrub (musician), to complete a work of art to hasten the dreary doldrums of the then known world: Background noise: White noise in today's parlance.

In this mean-spirited and evil world, this is the music of enlightenment.

How could this be music to watch the world go by?

Marco Uccellini is one of several obscure Italian composers who were primarily away from their native country composing for foreign courts and patrons during the early to mid-17th Century: Pandolfi and Matteis are some of the others. Andrew Manze is also one of the leading musicians in exploring previously unknown composers from the Early Baroque period. Although Uccellini is a very innovative composer with beautiful solo violin works, as I expected, Manze's shortcomings as an actual performer made the compositions themselves on this album mediocre in terms of their final execution compared to those of Nicholas McGegan and the Arcadian Group.

Manze is at it again as with every piece he performs for the Italian style that has absolutely no passion of any sort in his intepretations. They are lifeless robotic excercises and nothing more! Manze is principally an academic performer instead of a professional one and his performances sound like scale and technique lessons instead of the passionate interpretations they are supposed to be. I can't stand them as it really only appeals to violinists who need to practice the techniques that are painfully overemphasized ad nauseam in recordings such as this one! This sluggish screeching resulting from his over-methodical applications of technique sounds like a set of nails scratching the chalkboard every time. It's self-defeating really as such over-methodical performances make him sound like nothing more than an amateur compared to McGegan who essentially uses the same techniques and type of instrument but who evokes a jovialty and warmth from them that Menze struggles to reach at best. Manze's performaces are uniformly tedious beyond belief making me want to eject instantly every time I hear one! In terms of professional performance cirlces Manze is really but an amateur as these problems have surfaced before and not just with McGegan. Compare Manze/Romanesca and Goebels/Musica Antiqua Koln for Biber's 'Mystery Sonatas' where Manze's deficiencies are again shamefully exposed. Although both he and Goebels use traditional intruments and techniques as here with McGegan, Goebels' fluid and emotive interpretation again leaves Manze sounding stuck in the mud of his own confused renditions. There's so much emphasis on historical technique with Manze it's no longer a Baroque interpretation but a literally prehistoric one instead! To listeners who care about their ears, I tell you, avoid Manze like the plague whenever possible! Run! He knows great techniques but simply doesn't know how to properly apply them for public performance and that's a fact. In short, he simply stinks as a public performer and, despite all his technical knowledge, he is ironically one of the worst solo violinists you can get for virtually anything you might want to buy!

Uccellini is one of the more creative Italian composers from the Early Baroque and McGegan's performance is a much better example of his charm and Italian warmth than this musical mausoleum of an album. I have great respect for Manze as an innovative musicologist-violinist exploring these obscure Baroque works and the difficult techniques they demand but he is simply pathetic as a performer and that's the simple truth! He focuses so much on techniques that he limits his ability to express the lyricism they are intended to evoke in the first place. Avoid this album and get McGegan's performance as it's immesurably better than Manze's. Avoid Manze whenever possible as he's more an academic than a public performer and, unless you want excellent violin lessons for practice, he's not really worth a dime as a performer. I wish to add that that is only my opinion of Manze and not the other fine performers of Romanesca who are very talented and unfortunately somewhat reduced by their lead.