Review by jlaurson October 10, 2007 (3 of 6 found this review helpful)
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I can’t think of a work any less “New York” than Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. Espresso-fueled and with the 57 Street Station exit spitting out and swallowing up people right in front of my nose, Gerontius’s melancholic, confident, consoling, beautiful, and utterly lukewarm oratorio is something for greener pastures. I’ll gladly watch a lonely cow lick her brown spots and swat flies with her tail. But city buzz is alien to it. David Rendall, the tenor on the new Colin Davis recording isn’t doing anything that might overcome a tame, indifferent feeling to it all.
Of Davis’s only advantage over the stalwart Boult and Barbirolli recordings (EMI, both) – Anne Sofie von Otter’s immeasurably pleasing voice – there is too little to merit getting excited about this release. Expulsion from the CD player is the necessary consequence. Truly disappointing to these ears -- although, as seen above this review, the ears can differ on this. (And I did not not like this only because I happen to have been in NYC that day...)
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