Gratifying & Powerful!
WOW! Another noble and sparkling addition to Sarah Brightman's lifelong journey of unique musical artistry!

If it's true there is nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes, this artist somehow continues to combine instruments, vocals, images, and stories in a way that compels and captures one's heart and soul. Beautiful, personal musical poetry.

Sarah's music is truly incomparable - no one has created so many richly textured visual & musical experiences.

Keep listening until it becomes part of you. Study the lyrics & music for stories of crippling bondage, dark compulsion, poignant loss, sadness, regret, longing, love & passion. It's all there - a "Symphony" of emotion - from delicate tenderness to poundingly fierce passion.

Sarah's music is both restoration and sanctuary - a reminder that life's journey will be hard, but there is a silver lining and higher purpose we may glimpse someday.

Thank you again, Sarah Brightman, for giving the world another intimate & beautiful work of artistry that speaks so eloquently to the human experience.

Sarah Brightman
Absolutely beautiful audio cd offered here in Phoenix, Arizona by our PBS television station in their fund drives. Naturally, the price here at Amazon is so much better.

What we call in the United States "Phoning it in..."
Tooling around at work on Youtube, I stumbled across a new Sarah Brightman video for Fleur du Mal. It's been a while since I popped in my Brightman CD's, and so I haven't been in touch with her recent work, so I was surprised and happy she had a new CD out.

I listened to the 1st & 2nd track and between that and the cover graphic which I thought was dynamic and powerful, I was sold. I bought it last night and was expecting greatness.

Then I went past track 2. And I was sad.

This is just a real tedium of dissappointment. Let's start with Fleur Du Mal, which is obviously postured as the hair-raising, powerful cacophany of goodness. I heard it and was very impressed; I love that style of epic score - dark sounding anthem music. It had everything I like; the fiery violin arpeggios creating urgency and drama, the dark chorals and Sarah's ethereal voice over the top of it all providing the ambiance and power that simply seduces me. After a couple listens, however, I realized it wasn't anything I hadn't heard before. For anyone out there that's willing to open their minds, you can find much better from Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish or their rogue vocalist Tarja Turunnen.

After that, it only gets worse. The rest of the CD is just the typical insipid, dewey-eyed love laments and unoriginal let's-celebrate-love music for the wanna-be dilettantes that think they are basking in sophisticated and quality music. Except it's not. It's just average, rehashed and phoned-in. Nothing that makes you feel the loss of Con Te Partiro; no tenderness of Pie Jesu. Forget the dark looming power of Figlio Perduto or the sensuality of Harem. Even the passionate ethereal ambiance that she created with pop tunes like This Love or Here With Me is completely vacant from this piece.

I'll continue to look forward to her next work, but no MGM Grande Foxwood hundred dollar tickets for this New Yorker. Sorry, Sarah. Time to fire your manager/agent or whoever tells you to sing the songs you sing.

Symphony
Sarah Brightman really scores with this collection. It runs the gamut from soft and relaxing tunes to passionate love songs. Her duets are to die for and conjure up romance like nothing else could. Emotion runs high and I could not find one song I did not love.

What a disappointment.....
With the exception of the two duets with Fernando Lima and Andrea Bocelli, Brightman's symphony album is a total failure. Sarah's charming and alluring voice is still there, but the songs and music, she has chosen, are too predictable. Now that Sarah has transformed herself into a blonde skeleton, her focus on music has slipped away. Sarah Brightman's, greatest musical contributions are, for me, her past work. On a more positive note, at least she still looks good.... I guess there's a bright side to Brightman's last album.

It breaks my heart to say that about Sarah's work, but when I'm used to only perfection from her, I have no other choice...