Customer Rating: 
Summary: Get this if you enjoyed the movie
Comment: I recommend this cd especially if you loved the movie. It will have you replaying the best parts of the film in your mind as you listen to it. Very dramatic!
Customer Rating:
Summary: So beautiful
Comment: The Red Violin Soundtrack is a masterpiece by John Corigliano and it's hard to believe these songs hadn't been composed hundreds of years ago. The main theme, "The Red Violin", a violin adagio, is pure poetry, it's hard not to be touched by listening to it. I recommend also the movie, a beautiful picture about a violin with a woman's soul.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Haunting and beautiful - just like the film!
Comment: I'm probably slightly biased towards this music, because I was blown away by the film and the soundtrack evokes the emotion and passion I felt when watching the film. Even so, if you haven't seen this film, and if you like powerful, moving music, with lots of violin emotion, I recommend you try this soundtrack. Who knows ... you may rush out and also buy the film as a result!
Let me add that I am not a musical expert and can't give an in-depth review which dissects the composition of this music. However, like a beautiful painting, I appreciate art when it speaks to me; when it touches a chord inside me; when it makes me weep; when it fills me with joy. Red Violin does this for me - the film and the soundtrack.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Terrific Recording by Itself, But This is a Private Preview
Comment: THE RED VIOLIN is a deeply moving film, a magical and wonderful tracing of a musical instrument's journey from creation of the Cremona Violin through its multiple owners and the subsequent impact this rare instrument has on the lives of those it touches. Listening to John Corigliano's exquisite score creates all the mystery and beauty of this fine film, but this soundtrack recording goes far beyond that. Creatively programming a piece for violin and orchestra from fragments of the score of the movie, this disc includes a fine performance of THE RED VIOLIN: CHACONNE FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA and this concert piece is exquisitely performed by the gifted Joshua Bell and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. The Chaconne has found its way into the symphony concert halls already. Now John Corigliano has composed a full CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA ("THE RED VIOLIN") which he has dedicated tot he memory of this father, who was Concertmaster for the New York for twenty-five years, and the strength of this initial disc is actually a private preview of the Concerto. Having just heard the West Coast premiere with Joshua Bell and the Los Angeles Philharmonic I am convinced that this Concerto will have a secure life. The first movement is the original Chaconne from this disc, and to this movement Corigliano has added three movements of extraordinary brilliance and beauty. The passion of the Chaconne is set aside for the second movement 'Pianissimo Scherzo' which whispers and scampers along with themes from the scores lighter moments. The third movement 'Andante flautando' is closely based on the film's main theme and recalls the tenderness and beauty of Anna's theme in a conversation between the violin and alto flute. The fourth movement 'Accelerando Finale' is all virtuosity both in composition and playing. Hopefully the Concerto will be recorded soon - it is one of Joshua Bell's finest achievements, matched by the virtuosic playing by the LA Phil (the conductor was Miguel Harth-Bedoya). Get to know this disc and when the Concerto is played near you (or is released on recording) you will be all the more ready for the intricacies and beauties of a unique American piece.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Four sophisticated strings in five sophisticated stories
Comment: Corigliano does not consider himself a film-music composer, not even after winning an Academy Award for this score, and tossing high eyes with his score for "Altered States". He is more the type for 'classical music' such as chamber music and concertos. That is perhaps one reason why he's asked to score such films of this calibre. In particular the tale of the cultural, literary and geographical travails of a small, melancholic fourstring. Corigliano's approach is awesome and at the same time the only right one. As the violin passes from culture to culture, the music changes with it. However, at the centre of each of the five 'chapters' is one theme: "Anna's theme". And seeing that - in a certain spiritual approach - Anna herself incorporates the violin, her theme is also the Red Violin's theme. This is beautifully illustrated in the soundtrack's first piece (properly named "Anna's theme") - which is first hummed by a woman's voice and then deftly handed over to solo violin.
After departing from the violin's place of birth - Cremona - the listeners relocates it in baroque Vienna. So far the music had been rather ageless (meaning: modern, non?contemporary film-music), yet here it has started to absorb some Zeitgeist. This three?track chapter's most outstanding moment is "Kaspar's etude", which, symbolically and narratively, features a violin-solo and an accelerating metronome that abruptly stops ticking.
Next stop in our time-travail is a group of Gypsy-travellers, who end up with the musical instrument in English Oxford. This chapter features some wonderful Roma music and a truly virtuoso etude by featured violist Joshua Bell (who plays all the solos and leads in the score). These five tracks are the zenith in an already outstanding body of composition.
We journey to Shanghai next, but there is little original composition here, especially in the second track, which features an appearance of the Chinese Red Guard accordion band (still a very famous accordion/children's choir musical piece). Nevertheless, the music adds value to the whole with its oriental folklore and flavour.
And with the fifth chapter we have arrived in more modern times - in Montreal to be exact. What you get here is music with very mysterious quality. "Morritz's theme" is a slightly altered "Anna's Theme", very interesting.
After the "End Titles" - in which "Anna's Theme" is given back to the humming female vocal by the solo violin - we are treated with a 17-minute long orchestral piece. Here, Corigliano used stagnation in the film's production-process to further delve into some of the earlier themes. (Normally, composers are called in only AFTER all the imagery has been shot, but here characters being filmed IN the film had to play a composer's film-music, which is why Corigliano came into the moviemaking early.) This music is much more than "suite" and a living identity of its own.
The music on this album is intelligent and sensitive, varied and literary. And there aren't simply excerpts from it: there is a lot of it. It doesn't break boundaries, and it will not define new standards. But the album's content is great quality all the way, which will move you with deep instrumentations, astounding virtuoso performances and vibrant storytelling, each time you grace it with a listen.
This is worth at least four stars.
Bram Janssen,
The Netherlands
