Nigel Kennedy : Inner Thoughts

Featured Performer: Nigel Kennedy

SPARS: DDD

Length: 69:29

Released: 2005

Booklet: 12 pages

Booklet printed in the following languages: German, English

From the All Music Guide:

Medieval Baebes and other far greater shocks to the bourgeoisie have come along. Wild adventures placed under the rubric of performances of Vivaldi 's Four Seasons are commonplace. Yet Nigel Kennedy continues to roost atop the classical sales charts in Europe, and even to command a decent following in the U.S. despite a low American tolerance for British eccentricity. How does he do it? He has kept reinventing himself successfully. Perhaps he's the classical world's version of Madonna : he's possessed of both unerring commercial instincts and with enough of a sense of style to be able to dress them up as forms of rebellion. Inner Thoughts is a collection of slow movements -- inner movements of famous concertos from Bach and Vivaldi to Brahms , Bruch , and Elgar . Actually, the only composer falling into the middle of that large chronological gap is Mendelssohn ; Kennedy apparently needs a sort of otherworldly serenity for this project, which Baroque and post-Romantic slow movements may have, but Mozart does not. At any rate, this is no radical idea; it's a softball straight up the middle. All appear to be excerpted from previous recordings, no less. Yet liner note writer John Stanley manages to present it as some kind of dazzling stroke of originality. 'It is a salutary reminder of the very real danger artists face from commerce that an independent marketer thought Inner Thoughts ought to have a couple of upbeat tracks to make it a ' Nigel Kennedy ' record,' he writes.As with Madonna , you sort of have to smile and go along with the concept, which turns out to be executed with a good deal of professionalism and skill. Kennedy has always, whatever punkish pose he may be adopting at the time, delivered a very fine cantabile line in the violin's higher registers, and his talents are suited to these particular slow movements. If a set of slow movements would make your drive home on the freeway a little less quarrelsome, by all means check this disc out. And you can soak in the pictures of Mr. Sensitive scattered around the booklet while you're stuck in a jam. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide