Today's
free YourClassical piece is a rendition of
Deck the Hall. The piece is only 47 seconds long.
Despite the fact that it is a traditional Christmas song and it's only 47 seconds long, there's a ton of information about it on
YourClassical's dedicated webpage for the free piece. I'm feeling like I'm obligated to share much of it, whether it is helpful or not.
The album cover identifies this as a Naxos album in their "American Classics" series. Here's the rest of what is said on the album cover: "Bruce Adolphe - Chopin Dreams - Seven Thoughts Considered as Music - Piano Puzzlers - Carlo Grante, Piano." About the only thing that I could take away from that is that Carlo Grante plays the piano.
The dedicated Naxos webpage for the album is a little help. The album description says this:
Composer, educator, performer and author Bruce Adolphe has a close affinity with the piano, and he acknowledges the transformative influence of Chopin on the way the instrument has been perceived up until the present day. Chopin Dreams places the Romantic master firmly into modern times, building on his models and imagining him as a jazz pianist or exploring what he might have played at a bar mitzvah. The Piano Puzzlers take Chopin’s style and mix it into what Dick Hyman has called ‘the wittiest and funniest musical parodies imaginable.’ Seven Thoughts Considered as Music are deeply personal and philosophical musical reactions to inspirational thoughts by the great minds of Emerson, Kafka, Rilke, Chief Seattle, Novalis, Heraclitus, and Shankara.
And there's other stuff that you can peruse and read on
that webpage.
My opinion about the piece? Someone has taken a nice song and messed it up. It sounds like a jazz piece to me.
Deck the Hall is not a jazz song, and it shouldn't sound like one! I feel about the same way as I did when I heard Aretha Franklin butcher the National Anthem at an NFL game last weekend, by dragging the two minute song into about an eight minute one.
However, if you don't believe me or you're a glutton for punishment, you can listen to it by clicking on the stream bar on
this webpage. If you want to download it, click on "Direct MP3 download link," located on
the same webpage.
As for me, I'm going and deleting this piece of work from my hard drive, right now . . . .
Oh, I guess I should mention that this is the last YourClassical
free piece for the week. If they're going to offer us more pieces like this one, I wouldn't care if it was the last.