The Best Choral Album in the World...Ever! | John Shirley-Quirk, Daniel Sladden, ...

The Best Choral Album in the World...Ever! | John Shirley-Quirk, Daniel Sladden, ... | Best? Choral Album

classical music:

The Best Choral Al...

	The Best Choral Album in the World...Ever! John Shirley-Quirk, Daniel Sladden, ... EMI Classics, 2005 average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I love it and I give it as a gift

This is the first collection of choral music that I've purchased and I love it. I own copies of operas and requiems and masses, but if you attend choral concerts, as I have been recently, you learn there is a huge colletion of choral music appart from the forms I've been listening to. I appreciate the producers selecting "Song for Athene" by Tavener and "Celebration (Standing Stone)" by McCartney. They are new to me and I love them. Disk 1 ends with "Jerusalem" and Disk 2 ends with "Land of Hope and Glory." As an American I rarely hear these and I am so glad they were included. I believe this album was intended to help popularize choral music and I believe the selections do fine job towards that end.

I know snobs rage against popularizing classical music, but everyone deserves exposure to the beauty of song. I will also mention here "The East Village Opera Company" because they work to popularize opera by setting it to a rock beat. They do a fine job but also get criticized for attempting to popularize classical music.

"The Best Choral Album in the World...Ever" was so popular with my teen-age daughter that it was hard to get it back from her. I give the album as a gift to nephews and nieces.

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Best? Choral Album

I don't know about the BEST ever, but it IS a very good choral sampler. The range of period music, styles, and choruses is a great sampling of choral music, ranging from Gregorian to McCartney; the bombastic to the serene; the familiar to the lesser known. The quality of the recordings (from different times and places) is very good. It would make a good intro to choral music CD, or just a very enjoyable collection of choral works by a wide range of composers. It does, indeed, demonstrate what the human voice in harmony with others is capable of.

MarMSED

The music selections are extraordinary. The only problem has to do with the balance of sound. There are some parts that are very loud, and some that are so very soft. You have to continually adjust the volume.

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Choral Album

This album is filled with collection excellent choral music. Many are old favorites of mine and many were new to me. The performances were outstanding. In some cases I have selections in my collection that I consider better than those on this album; however, I suggest that you buy it. It is beautiful!!

On a negative note, the first copy I received was new media and had a scratch which rendered the last two tracks unreadable.

Amazon was quick to credit my account, pay return shipping and the second copy was free from defects. Bravo!!

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Diverse range but the songs are butchered...

Well, this CD isn't horrible by any stretch, but it is irritating to someone who's more than a casual listener of choral music. I'm by no means as musically "literate" as many reviewers out there, but I have a collection of probably twenty-five or thirty choral CD's and this is one that will probably be gathering dust in the back of the CD book.

The peices are well-performed for the most part, but they are hopelessly edited. Beethoven's Ode to Joy is somewhere around twenty four minutes, but this CD only includes an arrangement of about five minutes. The beautiful Miserere is, uncut, almost eleven minutes but is cut down to five and a half minutes here.

Looking back, I should have realized the major editing that would be involved, just by the sheer number of peices on it. I'm familiar with a great many of them and I know they're too long to fit onto a seventy minute disc without some major cutting going on. I just didn't reason that out before I shelled out the money for it.

Bottom line. This CD has decent singing, but is nothing special. If you're a newcomer to this genre, you might get this as a quick overview of the different types of choral music out there, but if you're any kind of an avid listener, this CD will drive you insane with the severity of the cuts. Beginners, if you're looking for a great collection CD, you'd do better to look at "Choral Moods". It doesn't have the diversity in styles of this one, but it will introduce you to incredibly talented composers. To the old hats out there, steer clear of this one and look to CD's by your preferred individual composers themselves. It's more money, but much less frustration in the long run. The old sayings are sometimes the best: You get what you pay for.

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