NOCTURNE - THE PIANO ALBUM

I had the idea of an all solo piano performances release as this Nocturne´s cover art suggests and kind of thought that this approach will simplify Vangelis usually intricate and sugarly powered arrangements to a more even ground but no and no.

This work is, to call it somehow, like a Vangelis semi-unplugged studio project. Yes the piano almost always leads and the modified or new "symphonic" and "electronic" arrangement revolve around it. But do they work as to become a memorable reinterpretations of a selected number of already published pieces (6 tracks) ? Are the new tracks (11) really newflanged in these kind of piano fields? Not really and worse than that few pieces achieve what I thought beforehand and more than once the music writing scratches deep into Vangelis´ultra-corny side which is just like saying too much.

But even if it is not my cup of tea, Vangelis sure has a quiet recognizable self constructed musical language (maybe too much, but all his and that is worth its weight in stars in my book), therefore above the only fan´s and collector´s stars, but really not as good (except for a couple of tracks) as to buy as many 3 stars only albums are.

***3 minus PA´s stars.