Average Customer Review: ( 96 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

Joel's latest venture is not like Michael Jordan's baseball excursion. These are songful pieces, often beautiful and skillfully crafted, with touches that echo Chopin (especially Joel's waltzes), Grieg's Lyric Pieces (the suite), Rachmaninoff (soliloquy), and J.S. Bach (invention). It's fairly sophisticated stuff -- nothing Billy-esque about it -- yet we hear in the work the musicality and touches of humor that have contributed to the artist's popularity over the years. The humor extends to the packaging and titling of the CD: it mimics an old Schirmer score, it flaunts delusion.

The pieces lack the clear melodic spine that gives coherence and start-to-finish propulsion as in the great music of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and Schumann, but hey, their early opuses weren't their most distinguished work either. Mr. Joel deserves to be cut some slack here. These pieces show real promise, and a few of them may even grow on us as we listen to them more carefully and more often. Mark Twain said famously that Wagner's music is better than it sounds; these pieces are, on the whole, considerably better than Page and Baer suggest.

The work is inspiring, partly because he does it in his 50s, but especially because he does it against a tidal wave of focus-group-driven pablum that has all but buried the sort of serious, complex music that has provided deep satisfaction for thoughtful people since the Baroque era. It was a thrill to see TV coverage of a huge auditorium in Philadelphia packed recently with young people absolutely mesmerized by this music. He did mix it up with some of his classic rock favorites ("Piano Man," "Just the Way You Are," "New York State of Mind"), but scans of the audience revealed a sea of faces extremely interested in his new "old" music.

Two and a half cheers for Billy Joel and his talented collaborator/interpreter/performer, Richard Joo. I applaud Joel's following his instincts, taking risks. I want more; I'm eager to hear what is to follow.

38 of 42 found the following review helpful:

The Piano Man goes classical.....Feb 13, 2004
By Betty June Moore
Over the past several years, I have found that my love for classical music has been reawakened, and even though my taste in music is still rooted in pop, rock, and other genres, I have a few albums with works both for full symphony orchestra (these being mostly film scores) and solo instruments, such as Billy Joel's first album of piano pieces, 2001's Fantasies and Delusions.

I love Billy Joel's more familiar pop/rock works, so when I received this CD for Christmas I was pleased. First, because in some of Billy's songs there are elements of his groundings in the classics; the melody in 1993's "Lullaby" was based on the style of Edvard Grieg, while the chorus of 1983's "This Night" (which is also one of my very favorite songs) is lifted note by note from a Beethoven piano concerto. Second, when I placed the CD into my stereo and pushed the "PLAY" button, the wonderful performances by pianist Richard Joo allowed me to shut out the outside world and simply relax, accompanied by Joel's sometimes cheerful, sometimes haunting, yet always beautiful compositions.

Although there are 10 compositions on this 12-track Sony Classical CD, they are not organized by their Opus numbers. Instead, producer Steven Epstein arranged the tracks for aesthetic purposes, starting the album with Opus 3 "Reverie (Villa D'Este)." As its title suggests, Joo plays this piece in a tempo suggesting thoughtful reflection. It brings to mind the shimmering nuances of memories and the emotions that come with them. Joo starts out with a slow, deliberate pace, then alternates between quick bursts of music and then back to the slow reverie-inducing tempo.

Another composition along this same musical mood (and one that I really like) is the 11:04-long Opus 7 "Aria (Grand Canal)," which is gentle and soothing, a perfect piano piece to just sit and relax to.

Although I have enjoyed the entire CD -- including the bright and cheerful Opus 2 "Waltz #1 (Nunley's Carousel)" -- I am enthralled by two pieces in particular: Opus 1 "Soliloquy (On a Separation)" and Opus 8 "Suite for Piano (Star-Crossed)." The former is a melancholy reflection on the theme of being away from someone you love; the latter is a tone poem in three movements (Innamorato, Sorbetto, and Delusion) that seems to fit the narrative of a doomed love affair.

The clarity of this recording gives the listener the auditory illusion of sitting in the front row in the renowned Vienna Konzerthaus at the Mozartsaal in Austria's capital, listening as Joo plays masterfully on a Steinway piano.

This is a beautiful album that should appeal to both the serious classical music listener as well as Billy Joel fans who not only know that not only could he draw audiences with his pop/rock songs, but that he draws upon many different styles of music, including "high-brow" classical compositions. I am pleased that someone was thoughtful enough to give this to me for Christmas, and I heartily recommend it as a worthy addition to anyone's CD collection.

29 of 33 found the following review helpful:

Surprisingly good!Mar 19, 2003
By Michael J Edelman
Billy Joel has been slammed by some critics for attempting to enter the same genre as Chopin or Liszt, but I think these critics are really setting up a straw man just for the pleasure of it. The proper context to compare Joel's first classical work with is not the great masters of the piano, but the great bulk of contemporary composers- and in that context I think he acquits himself very well indeed.

I have listened to a lot of contemporary works for piano, both live and recorded, and most of it leaves me somewhat unimpressed. There's a lot of workmanlike composition out there but precious little that produces memorable themes like the aforementioned masters. Joel however, does produce memorable, even whistleable themes, and developes them very competantly, too. It shouldn't be surprising, as he's built a career out of crafting fine melodies and developing them in the context of the pop song. He's just taking that skill in a different direction here.

Is he the Chopin for the 21st century? Well, no, of course not. But he's a fine composer, and this album is certainly one of the better modern works for piano I've heard in recent years.

23 of 26 found the following review helpful:

Fantasies & DelusionsNov 07, 2001
By William O Herman
When I first heard Aria (Grand Canal) on the radio, the composer and composition was not announced. The listener was given the option to guess. I've been a classical pianist for over 40 years. After a few minutes of listening I came to a conclusion that it was the haunting mood and melancholy of Rachmaninoff, the exotic mysticism of Scriabin, a Chopin Waltz maybe, or perhaps...an extension of Liszt's Years of Pilgramige.
When he announced Billy Joel I was quite quite surprised.
I am a big fan of Rachmaninoff, and many parts of this entire album has his influence. Debussy's influence is also present. After purchasing the piano scores to this album, I really discovered the unique style of these compositions. In Soliloquy for example, the first score in the collection, I here Debussy's Sunken Cathedral, Preludes Book I toward the finale. You will also find a few wonderful surprises in the remaining scores. They're all great gems of music and each one paints a picture. It's not Debussy, or Rachmaninoff...it's Billy Joel and many of his fans cannot relate to that.
If you are a classical music listener, appreciate it for what it's worth. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If you are a rock music listener, this would probably be an alien from another planet. At any rate, I think it's great. Hats off to Billy Joel !

D. Stewart

(...)

See all 96 customer reviews on Amazon.com