Search - Bernard Kruysen, Gabriel Faure, Jean Fournet :: Fauré: Requiem; Pavane; Pelléas et Mélisande

Not disappointing

Wayne A. | Belfast, Northern Ireland | 01/21/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I just listened to this, in its new remastered form, and was very impressed. Ameling had always been one of the selling points of this disc--probably why Philips tends to keep it around in one form or another. The Dutch chorus is wonderful and if the conducting is four-square I hardly noticed. I'm surprised elswhere on this page that the easily available and excellent Herreweghe on Harmonia Mundi was not recommended as an alternative instead of recordings that either haven't been issued on CD or can't be found anywhere on this planet. I once met a fellow who worked in a record store who when asked to recommend, say, a great Beethoven Fifth would go one and on about some unavailable bootleg recording or LP that had been out of print for 35 years. I followed up on his suggestions at times and found myself wallowing in a world I never want to be a part of. Most of these hard-to-find recordings were interesting, or had their merits, but were hardly the grail. After a while I realized he was a snob who reveled in his knowledge of the arcane--the less known the orchestra, conductor, or label, the better. I prefer older recordings that sadly, like this one, are going out of print, but I can usually find great ones on labels that at least sold in stores that weren't only in Bulgaria. I gave him many Not Helpful votes.



One of the people on this page writes reviews for a classical music magazine that gets slimmer every year. Eventually (I predict five to ten years) it will stop publishing. I know its competitor already has big problems; libraries don't even subscribe to it anymore. The classical music market is in serious decline. Eventually the Testament label with its specialty $25 CDs will vanish too, along with the whole collector market. This will happen sooner than anyone thinks. When the obituary is written for the whole Classical Music World (by some future Gibbon) it'll be noted that it was a suicide."