Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 A Smiling Bach! Mar 04, 2002
Let me introduce you to Richard Stoltzman! (start CD: "Worldbeat Bach"). Now, listen to his joy and way he celebrates life through Bach! Listen to the excellence of musicianship, his diversity of approach to Bach's most popular music, hear the total love and respect he shows for this masterful composer. Lavish yourself in the silkiness of his clarinet tones....and, for a bonus, his son joins him and his friends with arrangement and performances...Ladies and Gentlemen: RICHARD STOLZMAN! Now, I said, I'd like to revisit some of his other CDs..."New York Counterpoint", "Aria", "Dreams", etc. I want to get to know him better. Yes, I love his serious clarinet, but this energized, silky love shows the influence, perhaps, that came from his father playing Benny Goodman records and the other great jazz musicians of that era around his young son. "Worldbeat Bach" is a splendid introduction to all who have never really met Richard Stoltzman. Happily, I have, and it's all true!..Madge Bruner Hazen
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Curt Hill Jan 10, 2002
Well - I'm glad I didn't read the first review prior to purchasing this. I love Richard Stoltzman's treatments of these gems, I love the liner notes, I love everything about this disc. It makes me happy. The musicianship is extraordinary, and the playfulness is delightful.
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
Bach Rules! Jul 26, 2000
I don't know what possessed the first reviewer to be so vociferous in critiquing this album. In fact, this is a delightful reinterp of Bach's music. Very danceable and joyous. Maybe it helps that I am not expecting anything in particular from Stoltzman. This album swings. If the first reviewer thought it would appeal only to college kids on acid, he is way wrong. His review sounds like he was on stomnach acid. Lighten up!
10 of 25 found the following review helpful:
 Richard Stoltzman, what happened to you? May 20, 2000
Having become a Richard Stoltzman fan almost a decade ago after hearing the sublime "Innervoices," and having followed his career and enjoyed his work with Bill Douglas, I was eager to hear this new recording. I tried to find sound clips of it online and none of the web sites provided any, so I trekked to the closest Borders Books and had a reluctant clerk retrieve it from the back room, where it was awaiting shelving. They let me listen to it and I was jarred. My friend and I passed the headphones back and forth and recoiled. In the car on the way home she quipped, "It was...unnerving....almost like the Tijuana Brass playing the xylophone. "And being forced to listen to it with a migraine," I added. "In a stuck elevator. With a group of demonic cherubs beating on tin cans."It isn't even jazz -- and certainly not "classical." Who would listen to it? Stoltzman's demented, perky, jumpy spin on Bach would appeal to no one except for maybe a group of college students on acid. Whatever has possessed Richard Stoltzman to issue such a jangling, ugly-sounding recording? It combines the worst elements of trite "fusion" music, complete with Wendy Carlos-isms, juxtaposed with politically correct ethnic tribal sounds and a deadeningly canned mechanical percussion backdrop, and a bevy of nervous and tinny instruments that would cause the most sensitive listener to break out in hives. I have always associated Richard Stoltzman with sublime clarinet solos, sumptuous arrangements, and supreme musicianship. What has happened? If you want to hear the Richard Stoltzman I love and revere, listen to "Innervoices" or "Spirits" or "Begin Sweet World." Run from this!
|
