On track: A perfect example of an insidious genre

By WILLIAM DART

With all the illustrious names in its catalogue, EMI should be thoroughly ashamed to release its Harmony CD and describe it as the "Official Classical Album for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games".

This is precisely the sort of loose language that has resulted in our Princess of Bland, Hayley Westenra, competing alongside serious artists such as Cecilia Bartoli and Marin Alsop in the recent Classical Brit Awards.

Blame it on the contemporary craze for "crossover" - not the kind of crossover which once used to twist fun foxtrots and silly sambas out of the classics, but an insidious, cancerous genre which would take on the mantle of classical music while telling us all the time it was really hoping to act as a bridge to the real thing.

A bridge to the bank, more likely. If you look at the line-up on Harmony, Maria Callas singing Aida is about as serious as you get, and if this track is meant to acknowledge an Egyptian presence at the Games, I'm worried.

Why do such thoughts come to mind? It's funny how various nations seem to have been marshalled on to the project - New Zealand is represented by Dame Kiri warbling Po Karekare Ana and Russia by the dreadful Izzy going Polovtsian (with that Stranger in Paradise tune).

I could well imagine the thousands of Hong Kong citizens who took to the streets in protest a few weeks ago might well feel equivocal about Vanessa-Mae's Happy Valley - The 1997 Reunification Overture.

This tawdry piece was written to celebrate the coming together of China and Hong Kong - a work that was originally premiered in a racecourse, with 50 Wu-shu flag bearers.

And this is the top end of the project. At the bottom you have Maksim's Olympic Dream, plodding muzak which sounds as if Richard Clayderman is trying to rev himself into a Carole King song, or German singer Helmut Lotti rounding off the disc with Auld Lang Syne, a good reason for not staying at the Hogmanay till midnight.

And if you have a masochistic bent, why not sample the Celtic Tenors flaying their vocal chords over Mull of Kintyre, complete with bagpipe interlude or Placido putting Verdi and Wagner aside to do his Latin pop schtick.

Doubtless, Harmony is a triumph of marketing. Sadly, it could have been so much more.

* Harmony: The Official Athens 2004 Olympic Games Classical Album (EMI 57819)