 [Larger view] | Tomaso Albinoni, Samuel Barber and more - Adagio Greatest Hits
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 Out on a limb | |
| I sat down to browze the B's and noticed the large number of these collections, all similarly titled; The Greatest of something or other. I must confess I feel sad to think that many people will listen to,for instance, the "adagietto" from Mahlers Fifth symphony entirely out of any context with the overwhelming music that precedes it. I guess it is okay to not know all of the work but if thats the case why bother with mere extracts?. Really, I'm not playing the snob here but think abbout it, who determines what the greatest is? I look through the titles on these collections and I can think of hundreds of titles that belong under the rubric of "Greatest". There would be a great deal of sense in getting a recording of the Mahler Fifth, or indeed any of his symphonies, listening to it carefully, reading the liner notes if there are any and talking to another music listener about it and do whatever you have to do to get a handle on this music. Believe me, this is tremendous music from start to finish and sadly, there are no shortcuts to understanding it. What must happen is for the mind to be opened up as an act of will, which is the least you can bring to the table. The composer sweats bullets, the orchestra members devote whole days to mastering one passage, an engineer knocks himself out and for what? For me to listen to a snippet or two while I defrost the freezer? And can I con myself into believing that I am now a big fan of Mahler based on an extract? I don't think so. I know, this sounds like arrant snobbery but it isn't. If anything this urge to taste but not to digest is itself a form of snobbery, it says,"I don't need to know all that other stuff to get something out of a piece of music". I think we do need to know a lot of stuff, most of all because it's fun and it's supremely rewarding too. To own a collection of the greatest music means about a thousand cd's or so, not five or six. I'm closing on two thousand and far from finished. I'm not bragging, but I think collections like this are trivial at best and I say that as an owner of some dating back to lp's. Sometimes I had to buy a whole set in order to get maybe one rarity. That hardly happens anymore. Go out on a limb and get a whole pie rather than one thin slice. | |
 Adagio - Greatest Hits | |
| This is a masterful compilation of some the most hauntingly beautiful music put to CD. Bravo! |
