Count me out BASIL RAMSEY trying Spohr Naxos    8.555965

My life's brief encounters with Luis Spohr have left me with the feeling of an indulgent period of dreaming in a comfortable armchair cocooned in an atmosphere providing anything that might render us mentally drugged and sanitized. There is almost an urge to capitulate.

It is misleading to make too much of this effect. Firstly, it is my experience and possibly rare. Much depends on an individual's expectation of music -- a soothing drug for a journey through an experience that is memorable for sheer physical impact, or an overwhelming presence of something magisterial. Spohr first came into my experience years ago with one of those po-faced cantatas like The Last Judgement. If I deride something that has a quality I have missed, put it down to a hopelessly muddled musical education.

I acknowledge here performances with a silken sheen and immaculate breeding. Try them for the music [listen -- track 4, 0:00-1:00].

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Record Box is Music & Vision's regular Saturday series of shorter CD reviews