my Goodness Yes

The fourth studio album from the contemporary prog rock supergroup picks right up where 2009's well-received Whirlwind left off. Beginning with the mammoth, meaty, and majestic "Into the Blue: Overture (Instrumental)/The Dreamer and the Healer/A New Beginning/Written in Your Heart/The Dreamer and the Healer (Reprise)," which allows each member the space with which to flex his considerable creative muscles…

As the years go by, miracles become a rare commodity even to dream about , let alone witness, whether in politics (no messiahs anywhere!), in romance (a seemingly prehistoric concept) or in the arts (boring!!!!!). But , somehow in Progland (where fairytales often coalesce with legends), there is still the spark. Who would of ever imagined that this once-seminal band of the timeless Italian School of Progressive Music, after decades of poppish dirge (by opposition to their earlier monuments), would one day , 30 years later, deliver such a riveting recording!..

Hot on the heels of Anne-Catherine Gillet’s performance of Les Illuminations ( comes another, quite different one from the Finnish coloratura soprano Anu Komsi. My suspicion that Britten wasn’t totally in sympathy with Rimbaud’s poetry is unsupported by documentary evidence, but in my own case there is no doubt: Rimbaud prevents me from fully appreciating the work. This performance has come as close as any to convincing me, however. The opening is crucial. The title is “Fanfare”; that is just what the strings should deliver, and my goodness, they certainly do. Anu Komsi’s is a big voice, easily capable of reaching the farthest corners of those opera houses that are her regular venues, and she uses it to dramatic effect in the “motto” at the end of “Fanfare”.