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Title: Not quite supreme quality
Review: It's unfair, i suppose, to rank one person's performance against another's, but having acquired this CD and Rampal's equivalent and nearly the same time makes it unavoidable. Galway is a wonderful flautist, but, as with some orchestra conductors, some genres are fit into better than others. When Galway plays Irish music, he's unexcelled. If he plays European classical, he's among the top performers. Here, in a Japanese environment, he seems a bit lost. Perhaps the mists slipping through the forested mountains of Japan have a quality unmatched by the oceanic fogs of Galway or Normandy. Something is lacking in these performances, a quality that Galway seems to be seeking without quite achieving it. Perhaps those who've never heard the Rampal Sakura are justified in their praise of this CD, but my ears can't grant the full five stars for this. If you have the opportunity to make the comparison, do so, and judge for yourself.
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