Customer Rating: 
Summary: A rather awful recording
Comment: I've had the misfortune to hear this CD and all the perversions of Johann Andreas Pachelbel's chamber piece on this CD once too often.
The work was written for three solo violins and basso continuo [violoncello or viola da gamba + organ or harpsichord] and it is a rather virtuoso work, typical of works written for a small group of violins [or cornetti] over an ostinato bass line in the 17th century.
All but one "interpretation" on this CD bares little or no similarity to the written score at all and almost all of the arrangements of the piece are complete kitsch, trash, even. Cleo Laine's "song" is probably the worst example.
So what do we learn about the composer from this CD? Virtually nothing. However, it is instructive to learn how tastelessly a piece of music can be pushed, strained, pummelled, shredded, extracted, decimated, pumped up, deflated, force-fed, mutated and generally exploited by musicians, singers and arrangers who clearly have no knowledge of 17th century music and couldn't care less about acquiring any knowledge of that music.
I work in a music shop and it always amuses me when people who've bought CDs like this one decide to explore Pachelbel's music a little further and discover that they've been completely hoodwinked and that the composer's actual music sounds nothing like any interpretation of the Canon [& Gigue] they've ever heard - except, of course, if they've been fortunate enough to hear Musica Antiqua Köln's or London Baroque's recordings. They walk away bewildered by the organ music, chamber music and cantatas of J. A. Pachelbel.
Two stars for the one rather pleasant H.I.P. recording on this CD.
