Rugby World Classics

Three very good performances!

     

These 5 stars are for those three tracks that I actually bought from this album. All top-notch! Definately the best versions of "Rule Britannia", "Bread of Heaven" and of "Shosholoza" I've ever heard!

The "Rule Britannia" version gets my five stars for being the exact version I'd been looking for everywhere but only found it in this album: The one you usually get to know from the typical movies - be it childhood or others. It's the one they also use in "The Parent Trap", for instance. That rather militaristic style with strong impulse in the refrain. Thanks!

"Bread of Heaven" in this album really gives you this infinite feeling of peace and content. You imagine yourself being somewhere in the Scotish Highlands with all the fog and mist around you, breathing the scent of the fresh air. Maybe watching all this from the window or balkcony of a deserted, old Scotish Castle, enjoying that most beautiful view. The choice of a pure male choir without any instruments really brings that deep and serious feeling across very well. Great harmony, cleanness, dynamic and reverb!

This performance of "Shosholoza" is really exactly the kind of version I had been looking for: Powerful African voices, purely vocal (except for a native drum), sung in great harmony with beautifully interchanging performances (low and high voices) and dynamics (a really well made quiet scene in between) - really a great expression of African culture. You can directly feel yourself under a huge and very tall native roof covering made of wood, amidst an endlessly wide African Savannah, people standing and singing under that covering others waving big fans made of fur to an african tribal chief, wearing native traditional costumes.