This album, titled The Virtuoso Cello, could more appropriately be called "Servais and Friends," since the vast majority of the CD is devoted to the composer/cellist's operatic fantasies. This is not at all a bad thing, as Servais is oddly absent from the recorded repertoire of many cellists. The remaining works on the program are more standard show pieces, with the exception of The Swan and Apre un reve, which are far from virtuoso pieces.
The performance given by cellist Joel Krosnick is uncharacteristically weak. Intonation is sometimes dreadfully poor, particularly in the demanding Servais works, and makes parts of the album almost unbearable to listen to. Krosnick's right arm remains a strong asset; his nimble bow stroke in Davidoff's At the Fountain is truly something to behold, and the long, sustained notes in the slower works of Fauré and Saint-Saëns are elegant and controlled. The most egregious drawback of this recording, however, is not even Krosnick's questionable intonation, but rather the very poor recorded sound quality. The cello's microphone appears to be far too close to the instrument, making it sound more like a plywood viola strung with banjo strings -- very unattractive. The levels on the piano's microphone are much too high, and in especially loud passages the instrument simply produces more sound than the microphone can handle and listeners are forced to endure hisses and breaks in the sound. Regrettably for those unfamiliar with Servais, this recording is one to be avoided.
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