|
from: Well-Tempered Productions
List Price: $18.98Amazon.com's Price: $12.97 You Save: $6.01 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0755425518523
Label: Well-Tempered Productions
Manufacturer: Well-Tempered Productions
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Well-Tempered Productions
Release Date: August 26, 1997
Sales Rank: 61452
Studio: Well-Tempered Productions
Disc 1:- fantasie (After the opera by Georges Bizet)
- Variations on
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Lara St. John often displays her anatomy on her CD covers, but she has more to offer than that. In this entertaining collection, she plays freely and on a very large scale, just what gypsy music requires. It may not take much intellect to play Waxman's Carmen Fantasy (I like Sarasate's better, anyway). But it does take intellect, and lots more, to play Bartók's Second Rhapsody as convincingly as she does here, with the very assertive collaboration of Ilan Rechtman. St. John doesn't make the difficulties of Ravel and Sarasate sound easy, but both musicians play with such flair it doesn't matter. Rechtman's gypsy arrangements are goofy and enjoyable. Wide-range sound. --Leslie Gerber
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Nastia Liukin 2008 Olympic Medal winning floor music
Gypsy
How cool is that? The champion of the 2008 USA Olympic Team, gold medal winning gymnast Nastia Liukin used this CD, the song 'Variations on Dark Eyes,' as her floor routine music. Arranged by the pianist on this recording, Ilan Rechtman. Fabulous!
Rating:  - Disappointing
Not what I thought it would be according the the jacket. Very limp and not a gypsy verve that would attend with a CD title like that
Rating:  - I liked the Bartok. The rest of it...meh
Overall, this wasn't a bad album, just a silly one. Most of these "gypsy" themed confections are throwaway encore pieces anyway, and one really cannot fill an album with nothing but encores. Thus, a few genuinely weighty compositions from Ravel & Bartok are necessary to fill out the album as a whole.
Sadly, she struggles at times with the Tzigane and gives an interpretation that I did not care for at all. What appears to be some overly close miking did not help matters, as one ... Read More
Rating: - The Gypsy-within
Its fair to say that violinist Lara St. John projects a public image that can be described as provocative, daring, uninhibited and free-spirited (forget the open top here - check out the bold leather blazer, confident hand on hip, daring look in her eyes and violin at the ready). While such an attitude may not be to the taste of all, it would seem ideally suited for bringing out the drama and passion of Gypsy-inspired music - a genre of music definately not for the timid or academic-at-heart.
Read More
Rating:  - Rubbish
This is an excellent album if you subscribe to the school of thought where "virtuosity" in the violin essentially equates to "dragging notes and comprehencively ignoring what is written on the page in the name of expressionism". I have heard better playing at amateur recitals from violinists half her age. I find it rather sad that her label knows this and peddles it anyway, plastering her pretty face everywhere in a blatant publicity attempt.
|
