Dad's Take:
It's probably not Mantovani's fault that his style of music became the elevator music of my generation, and so we react to it with fear and loathing and aching teeth. But regardless of where the blame belongs, the facts remain.
The music is lovely enough. But those slow, slow rhythms and ultra-high-pitched strings found a place in my soul when I was young that stood for everything unpopular about "old fogey" music and everything we hated about waiting rooms at places like doctors' and dentists' offices. When I hear this style of music, I smell hot enamel being drilled off of teeth.
This is exactly the kind of music that turned my generation off, unfortunately, to classical music, because these little studio orchestras with their dentist-drill strings were wrongly referred to as "classical," just because they used classical-style instruments and arrangements. It took years to overcome that and to discover that real classical music is much more interesting and far better than classical-styled renderings of popular songs and show tunes that strip them of all life.
So, that said, I'm afraid I have a natural bias that keeps me, maybe, from giving this record a fair listen. I hear the associations of my youth and the misleading "classical" label that kept me from discovering the sublime delights of Mozart and Beethoven and Strauss and Hayden and Tchaikovsky and Strauss and Strauss (or how ever many Strausses there were) for far too long. That's all I hear. I don't know whether this is good or not. It brings be aural pain as well as oral pain. Seriously, my teeth literally ache listening to this. Yeah, OK, it's pretty, I guess, but ow.
This is one of those cases where "prettiness" and "beauty" are not the same thing. Not to me. This is the kind of "pretty" you'd find in Pleasantville before the colors came.
Maybe Brad won't have those associations. Maybe Brad can give this record a fair review. But I'm five songs in and I'm having a hard time keeping to our rules. I want to bail. I don't want to hear the rest of this. But I'll keep it on as background music while I do something else. I'm done with the active listening.
Brad's Take:
After reading my dad's less than praising review of this album, I was a bit nervous to dive into this 40 minute orchestral instrumental album. During the first song, "My Foolish Heart," I began to understand that high pitched violin sound my dad mentioned. But after I turned my speakers down a hair, my headache subsided, and I began to listen a little more. It became quite tolerable.
The first song that I recognized was the second track, "Unchained Melody," (originally by The Righteous Brothers.) I love The Righteous Brothers' version of the song so much already that it's hard for me to forgive Mantovani (let's call him Manny.) Manny also arranged his own version of "Over The Rainbow."
"Summertime In Venice" sounds like you're actually in Italy. The accordions and staccato guitar playing set the mood. I want some spaghetti now, Manny!
My dad might be traumatized by this style of music, but I didn't experience the dental office nightmares that he did. I didn't even really listen to this kind of music growing up... probably because of the memories it made my dad think of. So really, this is borderline new to me, and I kind of dig it. I preferred the first half over the second, and I prefer the original versions of the songs that I was already familiar with, but the overall mood of the album was relaxing. In fact, it almost made me want to fall asleep in a dentist's chair and get some teeth pulled.
Brad's Take:
After reading my dad's less than praising review of this album, I was a bit nervous to dive into this 40 minute orchestral instrumental album. During the first song, "My Foolish Heart," I began to understand that high pitched violin sound my dad mentioned. But after I turned my speakers down a hair, my headache subsided, and I began to listen a little more. It became quite tolerable.
The first song that I recognized was the second track, "Unchained Melody," (originally by The Righteous Brothers.) I love The Righteous Brothers' version of the song so much already that it's hard for me to forgive Mantovani (let's call him Manny.) Manny also arranged his own version of "Over The Rainbow."
"Summertime In Venice" sounds like you're actually in Italy. The accordions and staccato guitar playing set the mood. I want some spaghetti now, Manny!
My dad might be traumatized by this style of music, but I didn't experience the dental office nightmares that he did. I didn't even really listen to this kind of music growing up... probably because of the memories it made my dad think of. So really, this is borderline new to me, and I kind of dig it. I preferred the first half over the second, and I prefer the original versions of the songs that I was already familiar with, but the overall mood of the album was relaxing. In fact, it almost made me want to fall asleep in a dentist's chair and get some teeth pulled.
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