This was the debut album of
the 5 Browns, now reissued after the quintet of piano-playing siblings gained attention from the likes of Oprah Winfrey and released a second CD. On both albums, there are a few tracks that feature all five of the young pianists playing together -- quite a feat, although the notes make a vague reference to their individual parts having been "coordinated" by a producer. Whatever tweaking was done, the opening five-piano medley of
Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee,
Bernstein's Scenes from West Side Story, and
Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice is great fun -- a sharp, opening thunderclap that promises to fulfill the
Browns' self-proclaimed "mission to change the very way classical music is perceived today."
The second album had a variety of duo- and trio-piano arrangements, but here one duet,
Ravel's La Valse, played by
Desirae and
Deondra Brown, gives way to individual performances until the concluding five-piano arrangement of
Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King. La Valse, with its mixture of sensuality and impending doom, is a work that might fulfill the
Browns' aim of making classical music cool for young people, but the by-the-book performance delivered here by the two
Brown sisters seems unlikely to knock
Gwen Stefani off the top of the charts. The rock-'em, sock-'em
Rachmaninov pieces later on, however, have the desired effect. The more ambitious second album, which contains a wider variety of both music and arrangements, may be the one to pick if you want to try one
5 Browns album, but this one is a competent collection of venerable classical crowd-pleasers.
Purists may have little use for
the 5 Browns, and pop fans who measure music in degrees of shock value probably won't be won over by them either. But they deserve credit for having succeeded at two separate original endeavors -- they've made a crossover impression without diluting traditional classical repertory, and they've managed to make music as a group of five siblings without any existing model of how to go about that. Make jokes about the Osmonds of classical music if you must, but the bottom line is that
the 5 Browns are a lot of fun.