The first impulse is to dismiss this album of 11 versions of "Nessun dorma" as just a pretentious novelty, until you notice that it was put together with at least a little self-mocking tongue-in-cheek awareness of the silliness and grandiosity of the endeavor -- "Hit" is singular, there's the exclamation point at the end of the title, and the conductor from the front cover is pictured curled up asleep on the back cover. (Similar compilations including multiple versions of works like Pärt's Fratres and Barber's Adagio for ...
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The first impulse is to dismiss this album of 11 versions of "Nessun dorma" as just a pretentious novelty, until you notice that it was put together with at least a little self-mocking tongue-in-cheek awareness of the silliness and grandiosity of the endeavor -- "Hit" is singular, there's the exclamation point at the end of the title, and the conductor from the front cover is pictured curled up asleep on the back cover. (Similar compilations including multiple versions of works like Pärt's Fratres and Barber's Adagio for Strings are presented with utter earnestness.) Approached in the spirit of fun in which it was conceived, this album can be a blast. On one level, the album can be perceived as a sort of single meta-minimalist composition, in which the same material is presented repeatedly with subtle and not so subtle variations in each repetition. On a more mundane level, it can be heard simply as an assortment of performances ranging from the...well, you know the drill. At one end of the spectrum is...
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