Truly impressive
Sara Botkin's one-woman vocal disc -
reviewed by ROBERT HUGILL'... in a natural acoustic ... the results would have been ravishing.'
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The artwork for this disc had me rather worried about its contents even before I had heard it. Listening to the first track I thought that I was wrong. Sara Botkin's account of The Water is Wide, accompanied just by harp, is spine-tinglingly lovely. Botkin has an attractive lyric soprano voice and a wonderful sense of line, which is entirely appropriate in this piece
[listen -- track 1, 0:07-0:48].
Sara Botkin at Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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Moving on to the next piece, Healy Willan's anthem Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One, I was disappointed. The anthem is sung by Botkin alone, multi-tracking the parts with added echo effect. That Botkin has the range to multi-track all four parts is truly impressive, but the resulting sound with its artificial reverberation is quite unsatisfactory.
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Copyright © 24 May 2006
Robert Hugill, London UK
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