Posted in
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Rhydian
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Genre
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Contemporary Classical
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Media
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CD
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Label | Sony | ||
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Reviewer
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Simon
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Track List
1. O Fortuna
2. Benedictus (featuring Dame Kiri Te Kanawa)
3. Myfanwy (featuring Bryn Terfel)
4. Conquest of Paradise
5. How Great Thou Art
6. The Living Years
7. Ave Verum Corpus
8. Sprit of the Mountains
9. I Won't Let You Walk This Road Alone
10. Anthem
11. Annie's Song
12. Land of My Fathers (Welsh National Anthem)
Description
Produced by Karl Jenkins and Nigel Wright, O Fortuna was recorded between July and October of 2009. and is a natural progression from Rhydian's debut release. As well as being backed by a welsh male voice choir, the album sees him teaming up with classical heavyweight Karl Jenkins, opera superstar Bryn Terfel, harp virtuoso Catrin Finch and the legendary Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. Rhydian pays tribute to his Welsh heritage with a collection of much loved Welsh favourites such as "Land Of Our Fathers" and "Myfanwy", classic hymns like "How Great Thou Art", musical favourite "Anthem" from the musical Chess, pop classics "Annie's Song" and "The Living Years" and the classical anthem "O Fortuna" . The album also includes a special new track, "I Won't Let You Walk This Road Alone", written for Rhydian by Grammy award winning songwriter/producer Walter Afansieff.
Review
Rhydian Roberts' second album feels different from his first CD, being much more classical in style. The opening piece, O Fortuna, may well be very familiar to some for it use on The X Factor - it is a very dramatic song, theatrical and epic in scope. Rhydian performs it wonderfully.
Though I don't think Rhydian's more vibrant and livelier side (having seen him in concert, he's an excellent live performer), really comes across in this CD. I guess the record company wanted to appeal to a different market from his previous CD but the choice of songs seems a bit lazy, some of the songs have appeared on TV and film scores, as if the selection was just picked out of a hat.
Nonetheless there are some dramatic and moving songs here, and he sings a musical theatre song, Anthem from Chess (composed by Benny and Bjorn from ABBA, no less) which is very powerful, and anthemic (sorry, but it had to be said) with a really big note at the end! In the future I'd like to hear Rhydian perform more musical songs on CD like he has in some of his concerts, for instance, You'll Never Walk Alone, Music of the Night, or Phantom of the Opera because he does them so beautifully.
Another song is Conquest of Paradise, originally by Vangelis and used in a 1992 film directed by Ridley Scott.
I also really liked Rhydian's version of the John Denver classic Annie's Song which is just lovely. It was a smart move to essentially stick to the original arrangement, using harps at the beginning of the song.
The Welsh folk tune Myfanwy, where he duets with another baritone singer, Bryn Terfel, is very touching and beautifully sung. It's one of Rhydian's favourite songs and I could tell it means a lot to him. This song was composed by Joseph Parry and published in 1875. Some say it was about Parry's childhood sweetheart Myfanwy.
However, I do find the use of choirs on the songs annoying, it makes the production feel overdone, especially on Annie's Song and Myfanwy. Rhydian's voice is so good I don't think he needs them.
The Welsh national anthem is very rousing too. I can understand the songs such as this one and Myfanwy being sung in Welsh as that's how they were written, though I think it would have helped to have translations of the lyrics in the booklet so that non Welsh speakers can understand them.
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