While there may not be a whole lot of pianissimo here, there’s certainly a lot of fine piano playing by Guy Campion and Mario Vachon, who literally spread the sound of Christmas all over the keyboard in 25 well-crafted arrangements of holiday favorites. The selections range from Silent Night, O come, O come Emmanuel, the Coventry Carol, O Holy Night, and God rest you merry, gentlemen to popular hits such as Have yourself a merry little Christmas, Santa Claus is coming to town, White Christmas, Sleigh Ride, and I’ll be home for Christmas. Many of the pieces are arranged “in the style of” familiar composers–Bach, Busoni, Liszt, Ravel, Gershwin–but the stylistic mannerisms are not always that obvious. For instance, the I’ll be home for Christmas “in the style of Liszt” to me sounded more like one of those old Percy Faith easy-listening arrangements, with all the swirling chromatic runs, and I’m still trying to figure out the connection between Ravel and Campion-Vachon’s rendition of White Christmas.
But that’s not really the point here. The fact is, the arrangements are idiomatic and inventive and warmly appealing, capturing the spirit of and fully respecting (never gratuitously distorting) the original tune. You can tell just how experienced and in-sync these two artists are as even the busiest, most expansive textures flow seamlessly as if executed by a single pianist. The bottom line is, this is a fine holiday disc, the uniformity of the piano sound combining with the congenial arrangements to make for a good background or party mood-setter. The recorded sound is vibrant, realistic, and consistent across the piano’s full range. [11/15/2004]
