Lawrence Power

This is a very good movie especially if you like musicals. Although my husband is not a huge fan of muscials and he thought it was very good. Great acting, great music and the story line is good. Liked it so much I ordered the cd for the music!

As wonderful as the film, with great original music which brings favorite scenes back to mind.

A very enjoyable and at times funny movie. Judi Dench gives one of her best perfomances with excellent support from the other cast members. This is a movie one could watch several times and never tire of it. AAA+++

From start to finish, MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS is the finest collection of solid standards and George Fenton's own recreated time-period evocations,fully fleshed and skillfully performed and recorded.The talents of singer Will Young will not go unnoticed, especially in his heartbreaking rendition of ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE.Your toes will be tapping,your lips will be smiling and you will be glad that this soundtrack and wonderful film are yours!You will be transported to WW2 England and you will be humming these tunes day and night.

George Fenton has put together a musical score for the completely delightful MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS that is a combination of original music deeply influenced by the time of the film (London during WW II) and some of the best 'old favorite songs' from that time. In the film the music is always present, whether in the performances on the Windmill Theater stage or in the lyricism of the acting by Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins and crew.

Fenton includes such terrific oldies as Johnny Mercer's 'Goody Goody', Charles Harris' 'After the Ball', Noel Gay's 'Letting in the Sunshine', Frank Loesser's 'Blue Nightfall', and Jerome Kern's 'All the things you are'. He segues these pieces with his own fine orchestrations and the result is a score that not only enhances the mood of the film, but one that stands alone as a recording. The various performers include Camille O'Sullivan, Charlene Ford, Ciaran Connolly, Elise Audeyev, Frances Garvey, Frank Lawson, Joseph McMurray, Kate Power, Matthew Hart, Melody Squire, Rachel Lawrence, Sir Thomas Allen!, Sophie Brown, The O'Brien Sisters, Vanessa Barmby, Vicki Davids, and Victoria Hay.

This is a recording to conjure up memories not only of a successful film but also of a time when music conveyed a lot of emotion during times of stress. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, April 06

Being an autistic girl, I'm poor at written expression but have very keen sense of sound & music. This recording of Sinfonia concertante and concerti is quite different not only from other performers' K.364 but also from Mr.Vengerov's previous play. The sound is so beautifully lyrical and refined. It would be refreshing to try this version if you are tired of so many recordings of Sinfonia concertante & concerti.

I'm writing this review after hearing the Sinfonia Concertante played on NPR (National Public Radio.) I'm a professional musician (flutist) and I have a special love for Mozart -- I already own 3 recordings of this work. As soon as they started playing this recording my ears perked up. This performance is breathtaking! The opening is slower than I've always heard it, but the playing is so full of nuances, the rhythms bouncing playfully, gentle changes in dynamics that match exactly what's going on in the lines of the music... that it didn't feel slow AT ALL. Rather, these musicians take their time to communicate more in each measure of music than any other recording or performance I've heard to date (and I've heard some excellent performances and own some great recordings.)

I was especially impressed by the ensemble between the 2 soloists. It literally feels like the same person (or Hindu deity with 4 arms, perhaps) is playing both violin and viola parts -- they are so "in sync" with each other. At the end of the 2nd mvmt cadenza, they do a long trill together. They start the trill slowly, speed it up, sustain it and then slow it back down -- ALL PERFECTLY IN UNISON -- any musician would realize how incredibly difficult that is to do. The effect is stunning.

I was so impressed with the performance that I immediately looked it up on Amazon to see what else was on the album. When I checked the customer reviews, out of curiosity, I was dumbfounded by what I read. I skimmed through a few of them, all negative, and decided to write one purely out of a sense of fairness. Everyone has a right to their opinion. Mine is that this is an absolutely wonderful recording of a great work that presents it in a new light -- by musicians with a very strong sense of Mozartean style who illuminate the work brilliantly. I felt so sorry for those poor reviewers who couldn't hear that. They really missed out on something!

There was a time when now 32-year-old Maxim Vengerov was thought to be the reincarnation of David Oistrakh. If Oistrakh heard this terrible Mozart musicmaking, he'd not want mention in any such correlation. If your idea of Mozart is to play his solo violin works slowly and to make the composer's early work sound prissy -- as if the young and vibrant Mozart was as sickly and pale-skinned as the mature Chopin -- in oddly framed and heavy-footed textures with Mozart's lifeforce essentially drained, you'll like this recording.

Vengerov conducts as well as plays and, believe me, he is a lousy conductor. Medicore orchestral playing is mated to odd and sloppy phrasing that's often interrupted by transitions that emphasize inappropriately heavy downbeats in dotted rhythm fashion, as if he took 4/4 timing and switched it to 3/4 with three heavy boots stomping the notes.

The conductor's inattention to mediocre orchestral playing is consistent. No section of the orchestra is asked to give much; woodwinds are light, brief and sometimes hidden, horns are plangent and stillborn, and the string playing is just as prissy as Vengerov's solo work. I don't think it's out of class to say this is one of the worst Mozart recordings I've heard in 35 years' listening -- at least of the ones I can recall. There is, to my mind, hardly a redeeming factor about this recording that makes it either pleasurable or desirable.

For Vengerov completists, the sound is OK, he plays all the notes, sometimes well, and the accompanying essay outlines Vengerov's wayward approach to the composer and his music, saying he compares these works to Mozart's early operas. In one of the great moments of irony in the history of written notes accompanying recordings, Vengerov says, "My only indulgence was the style of cadenza." If only, indeed! The UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, a group of 17-29-year-olds established in 2000, does nothing to save this recording. You shouldn't either.

Hearing the Sinfonia Concertante from this disc played on the radio a few months ago, I was instantly mesmerized. From an opening E-flat major chord of surpassing brilliance and resonance, Vengerov's and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra's "just" or "pure" intonation is a delight to the ear, a much needed corrective to the insipid equal-tempered intonation that used to be the norm in modern-instrument performances of Mozart. (This fact alone edges this version above most others.) One thing was clear as I listened to the radio: this was not the Perlman/Zukerman Sinfonia Concertante of a generation ago, but a fresh, contemporary account influenced by period instrument performance. I was used to thinking of Maxim Vengerov as a "red-blooded" Russian romantic violinist, and was delightedly surprised to learn of this other side to him. The orchestral playing is something different, too: Vengerov as conductor experiments with bold dynamics and accents, bestowing freshness and pungency on every phrase. The Verbier Orchestra is a group of appropriately Mozartean dimensions; the strings use fast bow speeds and minimal vibrato, resulting in fresh, transparent textures and a warm, glowing sound. Soloists and orchestra get to the heart of the Sinfonia, notably in a slow movement of rare intensity and weight. The other two concertos are a delight as well, with the magical rendition of the andante of no. 2 a highlight. This is a brilliant recording. A second CD containing the rest of the violin concertos is planned, and I can hardly wait.

(I have to take issue with another customer's remark about the slowness of the first movement of the Sinfonia; considering that the marking is Allegro Maestoso, I think Vengerov's tempo is perfect. As Ralph Pugdug intimated, within the framework of this tempo the two soloists communicate more nuances in the first few bars than other performers do in the entire work. I must echo Mr. Pagdug's astonishment at the negative reactions to this wonderful CD.)

One morning my radio alarm awoke me with the Sinfonia Concertante on this CD. It was immediately clear that this was a must buy album. The predominantly lyrical approach was clearly intended by Vengerov. According to the liner notes he looked for stylistic hints from specialists in early Mozart opera. The result is splendidly effective performances that are not quite the current mainstream. For me that is a good thing, since current performance standards seem narrow, mechanical, and self consciously brilliant to a fault. Having been familiar with these pieces for over 40 years, this CD was a refreshment.

It's good if you already know some of the music Bowen wrote once he had found his voice, because it allows you to put Bowen's Concerto in it's proper persepctive as one work among his canon, and as an independent work jockeying for position among the other viola compositions written previously and those of the day. On display are all of the influences that eventually amalgamated to become the recognizably mature Bowen style: the harmonic inventiveness of the French school via Debussy, the surging and passion of the Russian romantics via Tchaikovsky, the yearning modality of the new English school and the overwhelming technicolor of the Austro-German school via Strauss in Bowen's orchestration. While it's remarkable that the young Bowen had absorbed all this, it is even more amazing that just a short time later he was able to forge these disparate musics into a style recognizable as York Bowen. (See his Phantasy for viola and piano for the first manifestation of the mature Bowen. York Bowen: Viola Sonatas No. 1 & No. 2; Phantasy for Viola & Piano) The fact that these influences are clearly on display in the Viola Concerto doesn't lessen the incredible impact made by the work. It is just fantastic; compelling, ceaselessly interesting from moment to moment, showing incredible imaginative resources. There is one weak moment: the cadenza in the 3rd movement. It seems to be from another piece, and Lewis Foreman (author of the booklet note) thinks it was actually written by Tertis.

This isn't the first viola concerto, but it is surely the first truly virtuosic viola concertante work. There simply was no viola writing like this up to this time. (Remember that Harold in Italy is really of student level difficulty, and though it came later than Bowen's, Walton's Concerto isn't much more difficult than the Berlioz.) Bowen puts the soloist through paces expected of a violinist, while the orchestra has its own virtuoso duties to fulfill. How is it that violists don't know this work? I can only imagine that Bowen himself didn't try to promote it much, even while Lionel Tertis (the dedicatee) was alive, much less so once he was gone. Trust me, this work is a masterpiece from a young genius, and it should be played everywhere, instead of trotting out tired warhorses like Telemann and Bartok.

From the above you may think that the Forsyth Concerto is completely overshadowed by Bowen's, but that isn't the case. It is a fine work, considerably less adventurous harmonically and stylistically, but a work that is more than professionally written and is completely within the bounds of English taste at that time. Forsyth's is a classy work which wears its virtuosity lightly. It too could easily replace some of the hoary viola concertante works to which we're usually subjected.

All in all, a great, important disc, and in the case of the Bowen, a find and a revelation in the development of the virtuoso viola repertoire. Get it!.

This is one of my favorite Gothic Voices CDs; the Gloria by Pycard is possibly the most beautiful bits of musical harmony I've ever heard. The Agincourt carol is also stunning.