Decca's two-disc set, Relaxing Adagios: Over 2 ½ hours of the world's most peaceful music, pretty much delivers what it promises. The selections are in fact restful, intended to induce a sense of mellow tranquility. The pieces are nicely varied in style, genre, and instrumentation. For listeners looking for recordings with more stylistic homogeneity, Decca produces a number of "Adagio" albums, organized by style or composer (Baroque Adagios, Mozart Adagios) or instrumentation (Guitar Adagios, Romantic Piano Adagios). The ...
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Decca's two-disc set, Relaxing Adagios: Over 2 ½ hours of the world's most peaceful music, pretty much delivers what it promises. The selections are in fact restful, intended to induce a sense of mellow tranquility. The pieces are nicely varied in style, genre, and instrumentation. For listeners looking for recordings with more stylistic homogeneity, Decca produces a number of "Adagio" albums, organized by style or composer (Baroque Adagios, Mozart Adagios) or instrumentation (Guitar Adagios, Romantic Piano Adagios). The pieces on this album range from the Baroque to the post-Romantic eras and are taken from works from a number of genres, including concertos, orchestral music, chamber music, keyboard music, opera, and choral music. The performances, all taken from Decca's archives, are consistently very fine, and the notes identify the performers so interested listeners should be able to track down the recordings from which these selections were taken. (Purists may want to note that the Baroque pieces...
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