Drawn from three albums that covered the songs of
John Lennon,
Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, The Best of Beatles Baroque by
Les Boréades de Montréal is a sampler that merely sums up the group's efforts, instead of inviting further exploration. One might be excused for thinking that these arrangements might sound Baroque, given the credentials of this Canadian early music ensemble, but the performances are for the most part modern in feeling with only occasional Baroque touches (despite the predominantly Baroque instrumentation, which could have been used in a more idiomatic way), and they are quite similar in approach and coloration to the Beatles' own music. A comparison with
Joshua Rifkin's 1965 album, The Baroque Beatles Book, may come to mind, yet where it presented the Beatles' melodies in clever pastiches of the music of J.S. Bach and George Frederick Handel,
Eric Milnes' slick note-for-note arrangements on this disc approach elevator music in their smoothness and slavishness. Indeed,
Milnes preserves many of the sounds associated with the Beatles, including guitars, bass guitar, tambourine, drums, keyboards, and even hand claps, and the listener is constantly reminded that these are weak imitations of great pop songs. Whether it's a cello struggling to copy
McCartney's singing in "Oh! Darling" and "Fool on the Hill," an oboe aping
Lennon's vocals in "A Day in the Life," or a cornetto filling in for Harrison on "Here Comes the Sun," the absence of the Beatles' distinctive voices constantly reminds one that this album is a rather unimaginative and depersonalized copy, and that time would be better spent listening to the Beatles than to this ensemble, which is best suited to its usual period repertoire.