Grooving Classics: A String & Percussion Fest!(Sound recording review)

Grooving Classics: A String & Percussion Fest! Harold Farberman, Colorado String Quartet and the Ethos Percussion Group. FIM XR24 044.

This is an odd one. Sonically, the disc sounds better than almost anything you'll find on CD, no surprise considering it is a newly recorded XRCD from First Impression Music, FIM, whose audiophile work has been consistently good. But musically, you may have to get adjusted to the arrangements and interpretations.

Aside from the unfortunate title, Grooving Classics, which conjures up in my mind visions of John Travolta and bell bottoms, we have conductor Harold Farberman's sometimes fascinating, sometimes irritating arrangements of famous classical music for string quartet and four-man percussion ensemble. Some of it works; some of it doesn't.

Things get off to a good start with the second movement Andante from Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony. The "twinkle, twinkle little star" variation works well with a toy piano and various light percussion, joined in the "surprise" by the strings and a big timpani drum. But that's followed by Farberman's eccentric reworking of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which he so distorts as to be almost unlistenable. To each his own, I guess. The "Can Can" from Offenbach's Le Contes d'Hoffmann comes off well, probably because it's rather raucous music to ...