Well, it seems like this album has already been properly slagged on this list, but my personal irritation compels me to chime in.
Yeah, unlike the Walter/Wendy Carlos stuff, which had a very transformative, oddball, sometimes tongue-in-cheek approach to synth-ing the classics, this album rather tepidly amplifies the banal idea of classical music being "beautiful" and "soothing". I guess the whole idea of "light classical" programming bugs me to begin with, as it often takes quite interesting work and dumbs it down by excerpting the "pretty" movements of larger works (the Barber "Adagio" being a prime example), or at least contextualizing work based on it's accessability and mellowness, calling attention away from the other, often more engaging qualities it might offer.
And so, in Mr. Orbit's hands, one of Beethoven's powerfully inventive late quartets becomes a whooshy string pad such as you'd hear in any number of Hollywood sound tracks. The precise minimalism of Erik Satie's "Ogive" become a whooshy synth pad such as you'd hear in any number of Hollywood sound tracks. To be fair, there are some pleasant passages where whimsical synth doodling adds a trashy something, but the overall effect is a bit too mainstream for me. I feel like he's "explaining" these pieces in terms an audience of dumb consumers would understand.
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