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Truly impressive

Sara Botkin's
one-woman vocal disc -
reviewed by
ROBERT HUGILL

'... in a natural acoustic ... the results would have been ravishing.'

Sara Botkin - The Spirit's Quartet. © 2005 Sara Botkin

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
Sara Botkin at Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

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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