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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I knew this disc would be awful, but all the same I still bought it. Actually, I was wrong; it's beyond awful. Matthew Herbert brings nothing to the music; he just distracts and annoys the listener with infantile gimmicks and clumsy sound effects. It's the sonic equivalent of graffiti; like watching a bored malevolent child with spray-paint destroying a beautiful oil painting. How the once-great classical label Deutsche Grammophon could release trash like this is beyond me. Something as crass and unmusical as this would have been laughed out of court 20 years ago. But, isn't DG now the label of Sting and other 'classical' acts? I never thought I'd hear anything as crass and inept as Sting's DG debut album of Dowland songs, but blow me down if Matthew Herbert hasn't achieved the impossible! Hear this disc and weep...
J M Hughes
J M Hughes
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This CD will certainly divide opinion. Matthew Herbert, a contemporary composer, has taken the great Adagio of Mahler's unfinished tenth symphony as the basis for this 'recomposition'. Not just that, he has used a particular recording (Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra) as that basis; he has then taken short extracts from the recording, 'samples', and re-recorded the playback of these in locations such as the inside and outside of a coffin; at Mahler's composing hut in Toblach, Italy; played over the loudspeakers at a crematorium in Medway, Kent; and locations elsewhere. Herbert has also treated parts of the original recording electronically in various ways and inserted these, the final result being a work 37 minutes long.
The very idea of all this will probably be viewed as sacrilegious to many. It may appear to some to be just 'playing around with' Mahler's music; perhaps to cash in on the 2010/2011 anniversaries of the composer's birth/death?.
But having listened a number of times, I think Herbert has succeeded in producing a worthy piece. He clearly does loves the original work. In the sleevenotes he writes 'It is not supposed to be...some multimedia museum piece. It is... an amplification of the unsettling balance I hear in the original work between light and dark'. There is structure. We follow the progress of the original work. The beautiful angular main theme. The astonishing nine-note dissonance. At this point Herbert gives the original a 'disco', rhythmic, bass-heavy, treatment. It is shocking. Just as the appearance of that chord in the original is, but amplified, in all respects. The music gradually works its way, via various treatments, to its benign resolution.
I am only too aware how difficult it is to describe any work, let alone such a work as this. Anyone with reasonably open ears, and a love of Mahler's music, should at least hear this work a couple of times, even if they never hear it again. 'The meaningful expression of this jarring juxtaposition of the divine and the mundane'. I am of course not for one moment comparing Herbert's achievements with Mahler's. Will I want to return to this work in years to come? I don't know. Time will tell.
A couple of points. The recording has an incredible dynamic range; you may wish to ensure your neighbours are out. And I'm not sure about the morality of using Sinopoli's recording, as, sadly, he is no longer around to give permission. Mahler himself surely couldn't complain too much, as he was forever rearranging other composer's works, if without the facility of modern technology.
The very idea of all this will probably be viewed as sacrilegious to many. It may appear to some to be just 'playing around with' Mahler's music; perhaps to cash in on the 2010/2011 anniversaries of the composer's birth/death?.
But having listened a number of times, I think Herbert has succeeded in producing a worthy piece. He clearly does loves the original work. In the sleevenotes he writes 'It is not supposed to be...some multimedia museum piece. It is... an amplification of the unsettling balance I hear in the original work between light and dark'. There is structure. We follow the progress of the original work. The beautiful angular main theme. The astonishing nine-note dissonance. At this point Herbert gives the original a 'disco', rhythmic, bass-heavy, treatment. It is shocking. Just as the appearance of that chord in the original is, but amplified, in all respects. The music gradually works its way, via various treatments, to its benign resolution.
I am only too aware how difficult it is to describe any work, let alone such a work as this. Anyone with reasonably open ears, and a love of Mahler's music, should at least hear this work a couple of times, even if they never hear it again. 'The meaningful expression of this jarring juxtaposition of the divine and the mundane'. I am of course not for one moment comparing Herbert's achievements with Mahler's. Will I want to return to this work in years to come? I don't know. Time will tell.
A couple of points. The recording has an incredible dynamic range; you may wish to ensure your neighbours are out. And I'm not sure about the morality of using Sinopoli's recording, as, sadly, he is no longer around to give permission. Mahler himself surely couldn't complain too much, as he was forever rearranging other composer's works, if without the facility of modern technology.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Vinyl|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have reviewed the actual work on the CD issue of this work already: Recomposed by Matthew Herbert. This is a comparison of the CD and vinyl releases.
The L.P. is pressed on heavyweight vinyl and has good quiet surfaces, although my copy had a few manufacturing clicks. As the work is only 37 minutes long, it is cut at a reasonably high level, and the cutting engineer has stayed well away from the centre label, avoiding end of side distortion.
The recording has a huge dynamic range, and the CD is superior in this respect, although you may prefer the slightly more limited range of the L.P. The massive discordant/disco section has been well managed on the vinyl however. To my surprise, I found the CD was better at revealing low-level detail. And I did not find the vinyl copy any 'warmer' sounding than the CD. (Although I have an open mind about this subject, most of my L.P.s do sound warmer to me than the equivalent CDs).
But it's not just about sound. The illustrations are of course far superior reproduced at 12 inches square. However the booklet with my L.P. does not contain as many pages as the CD; there is no reproduction of the photo of Mahler, or of Herbert by the sea. Is this intended, or have I a rogue booklet? Most shamefully, the record plant has used a cheap paper bag to house the actual disc; surely they should have used a polythene-lined inner? I found I had to physically pull with force to remove the disc which static was holding to the bag; in time this will surely introduce scratches. Such penny-pinching!
Of course you don't have to get up to change sides with the CD, which just about decides it.
Unless like me you just like the long-playing record regardless.
The L.P. is pressed on heavyweight vinyl and has good quiet surfaces, although my copy had a few manufacturing clicks. As the work is only 37 minutes long, it is cut at a reasonably high level, and the cutting engineer has stayed well away from the centre label, avoiding end of side distortion.
The recording has a huge dynamic range, and the CD is superior in this respect, although you may prefer the slightly more limited range of the L.P. The massive discordant/disco section has been well managed on the vinyl however. To my surprise, I found the CD was better at revealing low-level detail. And I did not find the vinyl copy any 'warmer' sounding than the CD. (Although I have an open mind about this subject, most of my L.P.s do sound warmer to me than the equivalent CDs).
But it's not just about sound. The illustrations are of course far superior reproduced at 12 inches square. However the booklet with my L.P. does not contain as many pages as the CD; there is no reproduction of the photo of Mahler, or of Herbert by the sea. Is this intended, or have I a rogue booklet? Most shamefully, the record plant has used a cheap paper bag to house the actual disc; surely they should have used a polythene-lined inner? I found I had to physically pull with force to remove the disc which static was holding to the bag; in time this will surely introduce scratches. Such penny-pinching!
Of course you don't have to get up to change sides with the CD, which just about decides it.
Unless like me you just like the long-playing record regardless.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A pretentious piece of rubbish and an insult to Mahler
I will admit to having bought this. It was in the Mahler section at HMV, alongside a couple of "versions" of Mahler's Tenth, namely the ones by Wheeler and Carpenter, which give an... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Cute 'n Cuddly Bartok
An Aberation and Insult to the Memory of a Great Man
This is a pretentious and utterly pointless essay in manipulation and exploitation.
I disagree with those who refer to it as a piece of 'deconstruction' - deconstruction has... Read more
I disagree with those who refer to it as a piece of 'deconstruction' - deconstruction has... Read more
Published 16 months ago by R. C. Ross
Classical Herbert
This latest release in Deutsche Grammophon's "Recomposed" series sounds more like a traditional classical music LP than the previous instalment ReComposed by Carl Craig & Moritz... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Colin Mccartney
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