Hot on the heels of Susan Boyle's underwhelming excursion into the show-tune repertoire with Standing Ovation, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Karl-Johan Ankarblom releases a disc covering the same territory, with singing provided by a Bradford lass who used to be in Emmerdale.
Ms Walsh, who subsequently became a member of the talent show-created quintet Girls Aloud, has lately been treading the boards in Shrek! in London's West End, so there is a logic to her first solo disc, as well as a wearisome familiarity about many of her choices (Lloyd Webber, Les Mis, Wicked). Those orchestrations and the arrangements and production, made in Stockholm by Per Magnusson and David Kreuger, have nice creative touches. So Walsh's jazzy As Long As He Needs Me, for example, beats Boyle's hands down, even if its supper club sound sits oddly with the lyric, and the inclusion of Hushabye Mountain, from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, is refreshing. On the debit side, the opening reading of Randy Crawford's One Day I'll Fly Away (it's used in Moulin Rouge) is overblown and the two originals from the production team are dispensable.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article