Search - Daniel Smith, Vignoles :: English Music for Bassoon

Definitely worthless

Red Thorn | 04/19/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Normally, I am quite tolerant of unpleasant music. This, however, was too horrendous for even me to listen to. After listening to the thirty-second preview clips from the English Folk Songs from Ralph Vaughan Williams, I was ready to throw up. They are all, without exception, too fast. In the lyrical, slow (dare I say singing?) movements, this results in a feeling of rushing through. In the last movement, Mr. Smith is simply unable to keep up, and the result is a technical travesty.



In addition to these poor choices of tempi, Mr. Smith appears to have no notion of what a bassoon is supposed to sound like, or even what a musical line is. His tone is thin, flat, and weak, utterly inappropriate for what he is doing. His lines are stagnant and dead in the water. When combined with the rushed tempi, this results in a performance that most middle schoolers could out-do. There are simply notes, badly produced and occasionally glaringly out of tune, without any sense of direction or line.



A cd to make into a drop spindle if ever there was one."