The Vienna samplists treat their male whistle-blower as seriously as any solo instrument in their catalogue, providing a large menu of articulations performed with vibrato (a vital component of the irritating ‘tradesman’s whistle’) and without. Now, with the help of the 1.3GB Vienna Whistler library, you can program your own catchy whistled tunes. Whistling has long been a quirky feature of film and TV theme tunes: think Ennio Morricone’s A Fistful Of Dollars, The X-Files theme and the irrationally jocular ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’. All in all, a perfect match for the Vienna Choir sections and a useful, expressive addition to the Vienna sound world. I was also impressed with the accuracy and control of the spooky octave glissando slides. These are particularly evocative in the alto’s and tenor’s quiet notes, a beautifully emotive articulation which would grace any melody line. All good workaday stuff, but as ever with VSL products, the library really comes to life in the four dynamic ‘performance legatos’, which feature wonderfully smooth (because they’re real) note transitions. The seven soloists’ articulation menus are identical, offering sustain, staccato, sforzato, two lengths of crescendo and diminuendo, and breathing noises. I was slightly irritated at some vocalists’ inability to perform a simple open ‘aa’ vowel across their range, instead delivering a plummy ‘or’ sound which isn’t that different from their ‘uu’ articulation - I guess that’s classical singing for you! As in Vienna Choir, the full library features the vowel sounds ‘aa’ and uu’ on all articulations, and adds the consonants ‘p’, ‘r’, ‘s’ and ‘t’ on the front of staccato notes. All employ the intensely cultivated, pronounced vibrato associated with opera and classical singing, a radically different sound from pop vocals. The singers’ ranges overlap to some extent, giving a lot of flexibility when it comes to assigning harmonies. Vienna Solo Voices (32.7GB installed) contains four female soloists (soprano, mezzo soprano, alto and an agile, high-pitched coloratura soprano) and three male - a tenor, baritone and bass. Early last year the Viennese company supplemented the choir with a much-requested library of solo voices, which we’ll examine here along with other VSL releases.

One of the longer product evolutions has been the Vienna Choir, reviewed in SOS October 2010. VSL have been in existence since 2000, and in that time the company have created a stellar database of over two million samples, with more to come.

Vienna symphonic library performance