Music / latin

Kaleidoscope


Reviews (3)


Presto classical

d. 2. Sep. 2022

By

By

Katherine Cooper

d. 2. Sep. 2022

"Recording of the week: It's evident that the singer's love and affinity for all this music is grounded in real-life experience on the dance-floor: the rhythmic impetus and ebb and flow of each number is clearly born of something beyond the notes on the page, whether she's elongating the phrases of a Viennese waltz to delicious effect or tapping into the raw energy of Piazzolla's María de Buenos Aires".


BBC music magazine

2022 October

By

By

Natasha Loges

2022 October

"Opera choice: Following Fatma Said's triumphant first album "El Nour" was never going to be easy, but "Kaleidoscope" traces an equally original loosely chronological journey through song, opera, operetta, zarzuela, tango, jazz, swing, musical theatre and pop in selfdescribed "montage", ending with Whitney Houston's 1987 cart-topping "I wanna dance with somebody" ... Said vaults effortlessly across stylistic boundaries, often via dazzling arrangements by her collaborator Tim Allhoff. And that Whitney Houston track? Even diehard sceptics will be moved by this vulnerable rendition in a translucent arrangement".


The gramophone

2022 October

By

By

Tim Ashley

2022 October

"Fatma Said's debut album 'El Nour' ... impressed not only with the beauty of Said's singing but with a cross-cultural programme that placed Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Falla alongside Egyptian and Lebanese songs, classical and popular ... 'Kaleidoscope' effectively builds on its diversity, though the emphasis has shifted and the stylistic range is wider ... An ambitious programme that embraces everything from a Spanish Renaissance minuet ... to Whitney Houston's 'I wanna dance with somebody' ... Concerns that all this might be too much for one voice are by and large dispelled by idiomatic performances that are often sharply characterised ... It's all tremendous fun ... The orchestral playing is fine".