 |  | Kashmir: The Symphonic Led Zeppelin (CD) |  |
The CD is excellent and I received it quickly after ordering.
January 3, 2007 | | good stuff (but you will still want the real LZ) | |
I have become convinced that the less an orchestral, solo piano or jazz version of a rock song imitates the original, the better it will be. This music does not slavishly follow the LZ originals (except for Kashmir, where the original is already symphonic) and works really well. Some of comes across as "Lord of the Rings" type music, in other places it is sort of Ralph Vaughn Williams pastoral. This type of CD is caught between LZ fans and people who like Lord of the Rings music and Ralph Vaughn Williams - it doesn't seem likely to please to please either type of person for long. But I like it enough to keep it on my iPod.
November 14, 2006| | | I have many styles of Music I like | |
Jimmy Page kept me interested even when the first time I heard him with Led Zeppelin was on AM. radio---Now with hearing another rendition of his style played by a Symphony..I was very delighted to hear how well the power of the Led zeppelin sound can still be heard this way.
August 31, 2006The first time i heard this album it was a warm summer night on the beach in Florida... it was the perfect setting. with the perfect album
May 17, 2006I've listened to many, many Symphonic re-interpretations of rock songs, and they are almost universally embarrassing. They strike me, basically, as a quick way for a symphony or string quartet to make a buck. And as others have noted, they essentially come off sounding like Musaak.
One of the few exceptions to this rule is the interpretation of "Kashmir" on this album. I doubt it will become a part of the standard classical repertoire even to the extent that a popular piece such as John Williams' "Imperial March" from Star Wars appears to have (that would be my metric for true success). But it succeeds far better than just about any pseudo-classical pop re-interpretation I'm aware of.
The ingenious move that rescues this piece is probably the arrangement of Robert Plant's vocal melody for a violin that is imbued with a heavy dose of Middle-eastern flair. In that context, Symphonic "Kashmir" is perhaps one of the best testaments there is to Plant's compositional abilities, since, when the melody is sung there is a temptation to focus on the words to the exclusion of the melody itself. It doesn't sink in quite as much just how well written and interesting the vocal melody line really is. Yet in this other context, when it's carried only by a violin, and wholly non-verbal, its intricacies truly come to the fore.
As I said before: I really do doubt this particular piece will become a part of the classical repertoire, but... you know... maybe it should.
April 30, 2006More reviews at Amazon.com ...
