{"id":77,"date":"2017-03-30T14:53:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T03:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ozartsreviewonline.com\/oz\/?p=77"},"modified":"2018-06-06T14:56:45","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T04:56:45","slug":"the-cambridge-buskers-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ozartsreviewonline.com\/oz\/the-cambridge-buskers-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cambridge Buskers Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Michael Copley (flutes); Dag Ingram (accordion)<\/h2>\n

DG 482 1785\u00a0 (4 CDs)<\/h3>\n

TPT: 4 hours 55 minutes 16 seconds<\/h3>\n

reviewed by Neville Cohn<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>Far and away the most intriguing busker I\u2019ve ever come across was in Cape Town when I was a child. He was an overweight man without arms, seated in a wheelchair with a wind-up gramophone and a tiny tin of needles on the ground just in front of him. His feet were bare.<\/p>\n

Incredible as this must seem to those who have never experienced it, this remarkable figure used ten astonishingly versatile toes (of normal length) to extract a needle from the tin and insert it in the appropriate place in the gramophone arm. Then, with the 78rpm record whirling around on the turntable, he\u2019d place the arm perfectly on the spinning shellac disc, an achievement invariably prompting applause and a mini-shower of coins from astonished onlookers.<\/p>\n

More conventionally, Thomas Gould , a sensational young violinist, has busked in the London Underground. And Joshua Bell, another superb fiddler, also famously did a spot of busking in a Washington subway, an event that created headlines internationally.<\/p>\n

Then there are the Cambridge Buskers, a duo who must surely go down as the most celebrated of all street musicians. Their LPs sold like hotcakes (still do, I understand) \u2013 and now they are on compact disc, a bumper 4CD pack.<\/p>\n

How refreshing it is to listen to these fine musicians \u2013 and they are both very much at the top of their game whether on accordion, flute, recorder or crumhorn \u2013 sending up the classics in a most delightful, tongue-in-cheek way. This sort of thing is VERY difficult to bring off successfully \u2013 and it requires high artistry.<\/p>\n

It is definitely not for beginners who would almost certainly discover how very easy it is to sound ham handed, earthbound, tasteless and crass in an initiative such as this.<\/p>\n

But with the CB players wondrously on their musical toes, there\u2019s not a hint of this. These two chaps know exactly what they are doing \u2013 and they do so beautifully in delightfully buoyant and engaging musicmaking. How easily this sort of musical sendup can sound tasteless and, worst of all, boring. No chance of that, I\u2019m happy to say, with these two fellows.<\/p>\n

Delightfully quirky \u2013 now sparking a chuckle, now a guffaw<\/p>\n

It is only musicians who are thoroughly trained and experienced who can take on a challenge such as this \u2013 and make it work. As any famous movie comedian will say, it\u2019s jolly hard to be funny The CB fellows, though, seem born to it with their zany expeditions through revered classics \u2013 anything from Flight (or might it have been Fight?) of the Valkyries to all of Beethoven \u2018s nine symphonies crammed into 5 minutes by two chaps on a jolly romp through the classics. It\u2019s an absolutely jolly wheeze, wouldn\u2019t you say, by two musically madcap fellows?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all jolly good fun as that light hearted wit Margaret Thatcher might have opined \u2013 and sure to give the apoplexy to those who believe that bringing humour to the classics borders on criminality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Copley (flutes); Dag Ingram (accordion) DG 482 1785\u00a0 (4 CDs) TPT: 4 hours 55 minutes 16 seconds reviewed by Neville Cohn   Far and away the most intriguing busker I\u2019ve ever come across was in Cape Town when I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[142,143,18,17,141,140,144,139,19,16,15,145,62],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recordings-cds","tag-accordion","tag-cambridge-buskers","tag-chon","tag-cohn","tag-dag-ingram","tag-flutes","tag-margaret-thatcher","tag-michael-copley","tag-neville-chon","tag-neville-cohn","tag-perth","tag-the-cambridge-buskers-collection","tag-western-australia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Yv33-1f","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/ozartsreviewonline.com\/oz\/heard-this-and-thought-of-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":0},"title":"“heard this and thought of you”","author":"reviewer","date":"March 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"James Crabb (classical accordion) \/Genevieve Lacey (recorders) ABC Classics 481 1874 \u00a0TPT: \u00a071\u201943\u201d \u00a0reviewed by Neville Cohn \u00a0 Notions of a wheezing classical accordion in combination with the tweeting tones of a soprano recorder might seem to some a less-than-delightful sonic mixture. 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