Description

Christmas albums by opera divas hardly make an exalted genre. Usually they involve overblown arrangements, hackneyed material, and singers sight-reading music they don't particularly like and making lame attempts at singing in English. With all her integrity, Anne Sofie von Otter would never do such a thing, and she hasn't here. This disc is a personal, eclectic mix, with the mezzo-soprano sounding sincere and approachable by sticking to the lower end of her range using small-ensemble arrangements you might hear in an evening sitting around the fire. In fact, rarely has Otter sung with such warmthmore… as in Pereic Moraeus's "Koppangen", accompanied by accordion, guitar, violin and mandolin. Not only is her English good but she seems to connect with the language emotionally. Amid the cosy, jazzy renditions of "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)" and "Silent Night", there are a few lapses into eccentricity, such as an atonal string ensemble arrangement of "White Christmas" that easily could have been done by Alban Berg, and some Nordic-language forays in which Otter seems to be getting in touch with her primitivistic Viking roots. With good taste displayed elsewhere, she's allowed. --David Patrick Stearns

Tracks

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Info:

Category:

Music > Albums

Case Type:

CD

Release Type:

Retail

Comments:

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Cover Info:

Title:

Anne Sofie Von Otter - Home for Christmas (Dutch Version) (1999) Retail CD

Part:

Inside

Dimensions:

1058 x 953 px

Size:

141 KB

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Report a Problem Wrong Cover Duplicate Image Bad Quality Wrong Info

09/12/09 by kaizencrazy

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