Once in a while I go out on a limb with recordings.  Sometimes it’s great.  I’m not as a rule particularly fond of “cross-over” material but I loved Emily D’Angelo’s freezing for example.  So I took a listen to Schubert Beatles from the New York Festival of Song.  Broadly speaking, it pairs Schubert Lieder with Beatles’ songs on a similar theme; Yesterday and Im Frühling for example.  The Schubert is mostly presented pretty straight (except for guitar accompaniment on Du bist die Ruh).  The Beatles songs are arranged, by Steven Beier, for various combinations of piano, violin, bass and guitar.  The principal singer is baritone Theo Hoffman with tenor Andrew Owens and soprano Julia Bullock joining on some tracks.

To cut to the chase it mostly doesn’t work for me.  I like the Schubert more than the Beatles material but there are better recordings of all these songs out there.  It’s not helped by a somewhat bass heavy, boomy recording which just doesn’t suit the music.  It’s always tricky when classical singers sing outside that genre.  Unless it’s “native” to them like Marian Anderson singing gospel or Chris Maltman singing traditional English folk songs it tends to sound overblown and to my ear that’s what is happening here.  The arrangements are also way too civilized.  So, interesting concept but not my bag.  YMMV.

Catalogue information: NYFOS Records.