Two birds with one day - Bird #1

This is going to be sort of a two part review - one of "50 Classical Masterpieces", and one of the "A Midsummer Night's Dream" recording with Judi Dench and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I found a two CD set of "50 Classical Masterpieces" out in our garage. Disregarding the question of how they wandered into our garage, I popped the CD's in my trusty CD player, and listened to them while doing some housework.

Overall sound quality: Eh...survivable. It's not so bad that one is immediately impelled to bang your head against the wall, but it does leave something to be desired.

C

Selection: Decent. I would've liked to have seen a better selection of Schubert (maybe the Ave Maria?), more Bach, better Mozart (the exclusion of Eine Kliene is...stupid), and definately some Saint-Saens. I did find some new pieces that I hadn't heard before (and that I liked), so all is well. One example is the Dance of Clowns, which is part of Bird #2.

B

Organization: My main beef with this set is in this catagory - why do they have all the composers spread out? For example, Mozart has one piece at the beginning of the first CD, and one piece at the end of the second CD. Why not just all the Mozart together? (Presumably) a composer would be in just one time period, and the people compiling the CD could just arrange the pieces within the composers, or just arrange the composers so that it flowed well. Freaks.

F

Presentation: The set's slipcover has the same picture as the actual CD covers, which is that of a tree silhouetted against a moon sitting in a red sky. In my opinion, it's not particularely brilliant or original. But that's just my personal opinion.

C

Overall grade: C-

Grading Scale: A = Superb! B = Good enough C = Leaves something to be desired D = Are you blind? F = Idiots.

Random Quote of the Day:

Light came from the east, / bright guarantee of God, and the waves / went quiet; I could see headlands / and buffeted cliffs."
-Beowulf, 569-572, Heaney