Customer Reviews

Victorian Parlour Evening

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This was a disapointment. After reading the list of songs included, I looked forward to hearing this CD. The instrumentalists are wonderful in interpretation and presentation, but the vocalists, though technically very good, seem overblown for these songs. Their performances border on the operatic, with just not the right amount of nuance for the repertoire. The soprano fares better than the male voices, but when there is a duet, they never seem to truly blend, but just compete with one another. I remember the great period recordings of Joan Morris and William Bolcolm, some of which are still available on CD(including a relatively new one- see Amazon for title and details), and this CD, though well-intentioned, never approaches that level of sophistication and purity of performance.

This explains itself as a recreation of home entertainment on Victorian evenings; and, as such, I found it quite satisfying.
My chief complaints are with the "packaging." Lyrics to the songs would have been very helpful, and further particulars about the composers and lyricists would have been valuable. In fact, from the disk cover itself, I cannot even be sure that the "Sullivan" who composed "Let Me Dream Again" is the same Sir Arthur Sullivan of the G&S selections. It also seems strange to grace "A Victorian Parlour Evening" with a picture from Bewick of people in Regency-appearing attire.
As for the selection, I would far rather have had Sullivan's wildly popular (in its day) "Lost Chord" and maybe "Little Maid of Arcadee" or "Sweethearts" than selections from "Patience" and "Gondoliers." As a lifelong G&S fan, I already have more than one recording of the full operas! Also, Massenet's "Meditation from 'Thais'" is not exactly a hard-to-get number. At the same time, no matter who had made the selection, somebody somewhere would have quibbled; and the reason some numbers are "chestnuts" is precisely because of their popularity. And the rendition of the numbers I have named above was unobjectionable: the "Prithee, Pretty Maiden" struck me as especially nice.
Do I discern a theme tying most of the selections together? The theme of Love, to which only "The Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" strikes me as a probable exception.
A disk I definitely intend to keep.