David Daniels and Craig Ogden "A Quiet Thing".(the CD contains songs by Bernstein, Dowland, Bellini, et al)(Sound Recording Review)

Songs by Bernstein, Dowland, Bellini, et al. Texts and translations. Virgin Classics 45601

Opera-based countertenors can't be blamed for wanting to get on the crossover bandwagon, and David Daniels fares about as well as most of his colleagues in other vocal categories, which is to say that the quality here is inconsistent. There's a hint of what this album might have been with Harold Arlen's "My Shining Hour," in which guitarist Craig Ogden adds a bit of a Brazilian inflection to the arrangement. Alec Wilder's "Blackberry Winter" is another good choice, a little off the beaten path on the way toward art song. But too much of the material is ill-chosen. Leonard Bernstein's anti-Vietnam War party piece "So Pretty" should be taken out to the curb with the avocado shag carpeting, and two "Ave Maria" settings are two too many. For every success, such as Bernstein's "Simple Song," which takes well to Ogden's syncopations, there's something like the disc's title track, from Kander and Ebb's Broadway musical Flora, the Red Menace. With the pure white vocal tone and excruciatingly equal stresses on each syllable, it "crosses over" into camp. The song simply can't take ...