Instruct: Classify a review as either positive or negative.
Query: A "Boxy" Performance

Taking Stephen Foster's music out of the parlor and into the concert hall is not a new idea but here it just does not work. Jeffrey Dooley, a noted countertenor whose repertoire includes the works of Handel and Purcell, composers whose music responds to countertenors with excellent effect, renders a performance here that sounds like it was recorded inside a box, resulting in a high-pitched echo that hurt my ears and made it difficult to follow the lyrics of the songs. I gave this recording two stars because the instrumentals are quite good.