Fanfare Reviews
from July/August 1999

Reviews: Holst - Maslanka - Piston - David - Winds of Change

HOLST 2 Suites for Military Band. 2 Songs Without Words: Marching Song. Hammersmith. BACH-HOLST Fugue à la gigue. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Toccata marziale. Flourish for Wind Band. English Folk Song Suite (original version) • Timothy Reynish, cond; Royal Northern College of Music Wind O • CHANDOS 9697 (66:27)

This first-rate conservatory band has already contributed two vivacious discs to Chandos's Grainger series (see Fanfare 21:1 and 22:2), and it shows itself to be equally adept in the far cooler idiom of Gustav Holst. True, one might ask in spots for more snap: Next to Howard Dunn's dash through the First Suite's Intermezzo with the Dallas Wind Symphony (15:1), Reynish's Manchesterians sound slightly too prudent; and their rich sonorities (coupled with Chandos's typically bass-centered sound) sometimes blunt the music's edge. But for the most part, whether it be in the gnarled obsessions of the First Suite's Chaconne or the self-confident strut of the Second Suite's opening March or the clash of superimposed musics in the painfully impassive reading of the Hammersmith Prelude, they convey the range of the music's spirit well.

The beefier Vaughan Williams works get suitably outgoing performances; and the disc is made more worthy still by a swinging account of Holst's plangent (and rarely heard) Bach arrangement and by Reynish's decision to present the English Folk Song Suite as it was performed at its premiere, before the second movement ("Sea Songs") was pulled out for publication as a separate work. In sum, if the repertoire attracts you, you should find this a welcome addition to your collection.

Peter J. Rabinowitz

MASLANKA Symphony No. 2. Laudamus Te. Hell's Gate • Gregg I. Hanson, cond; University of Arizona Wind Ens; Kelland Thomas (alt sax); Michael Keepe (t sax); David Bell (bar sax) • ALBANY TROY 309 (61:50)

Given my particular upbringing in the 1950s wilds of New Jersey, bands were musical organizations of a decidedly secondary and probably less-than-tertiary nature. The orchestra was the true device for realizing the finest and most rarefied utterances of Western Civilization. Bands were, well, best suited far providing rhythmic music for dumbly marching off to some later analyzed and utterly senseless battle. The old dictum that military music is to music as military justice is to justice rang in my mind. Subsequent exposures to Frederick Fennell's Eastman Symphonic Band renditions of a whole lot of repertoire coupled with a whole later yet sampling of such composers as Francis Johnson, through Sousa, to, among others, Alan Hovhaness, ultimately disabused me of those notions.

David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, MA, in 1943. He was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory and later studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Given the evidence of this release, he specializes in music for winds and percussion. After hearing his gutsy and altogether splendid Symphony No. 2, I, as a string player, feel egregiously left out. This is music of power and nuance, unabashedly in the tonal tradition, and propelled by a finely honed and often revealing imagination. As one who actually enjoys the 12-tone excursions of Schoenberg and his followers, I find Maslanka's language in his Symphony No. 2 compelling on a number of levels. That Symphony's second movement, based on the tune Deep River, treats its material in an almost Schoenbergian way--a fundamental deconstruction of its intervallic and temporal elements. In the end, it is becomes a Haydnesque and a quite fine foray into traditional variation form, but from a decidedly 20th-century perspective. Maslanka's variations are profound--encompassing the languages of the past, but setting them in relief against what has evolved since. Shostakovich would have smiled.

Laudamus Te (composed in 1996 and culled from the Ordinary of the Mass) is a largely traditional setting--a moment of accessible affirmation. Maslanka, however, makes it something else--a moment of profound questioning, and sustains and explores that query up to the final moments of the piece.

Hell's Gate, the final piece on this release, was written to chronicle a section of the Missoula River in Montana where several tribes of Native Americans, in their respective quests for supremacy, came to grief. The French subsequently gave it that name, and David Maslanka has produced a piece for symphonic band that celebrates and commemorates both that geography and its history.

In all cases, this is music that deserves to be heard, and here it is served both by committed performances and by fine recording technique.

William Zagorski

PISTON Symphony No. 6¹. Piano Concertino². Concerto for Orchestra³. Concerto for String Quartet, Wind Instruments, and Percussion⁴ • Alexander Gauk, cond; Moscow RSO¹. William Strickland, cond^2,3; Göteborg SO²; Marjorie Mitchell (pn)²; Polish Natl RO³. Sixten Ehrling, cond; Emerson Str Qrt; Juilliard O⁴ • CITADEL CTD 88134 (61:53)

One of the larger of many disappointments to take place in the industry in recent years is the abandonment by Delos of its enterprising series of recordings by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony featuring music of neglected American composers like Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, and David Diamond. This listener would gladly have traded a couple of the five Diamond discs for more Walter Piston, who, in many ways, is the most intriguing American composer of the lot, and certainly the most neglected in the catalog. Since then not a single new recording devoted to piston has appeared until the recent Naxos disc (reviewed enthusiastically by me in the last issue) of the composer's works for violin and orchestra--the jewel so far in that label's rather uneven American Classics series.

RCA's dropping of a committed exponent of American repertoire like Leonard Slatkin for the flashier, more marketing-friendly Michael Tilson Thomas is a sign of the times, and, while new, big-ticket enterprises like André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire will get plenty of attention, the major labels seem less interested in American music of the past. Fortunately, smaller labels like Albany and Citadel have picked up the slack, lonely beacons in the darkness for new releases and significant reissues of American music.

This present disc compiles several Piston performances recorded from 1962 to 1978, all of which, I believe, are having their first appearance on CD. At first hearing, I was a little put off by Alexander Gauk's Moscow recording of Piston's glorious Symphony No. 6, written for and premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1956. Gauk's first movement is notably lacking in fluendo, and his direction is somewhat stilted, though the 1962 recorded sound presents the Moscow Radio Symphony with a richer, more appropriate orchestral tapestry than the thinner-grained Seattle Symphony under Schwarz (Delos). Yet even though the Moscow strings have more ballast, at times there is a rather massive and stolid feeling, lacking something in the requisite quicksilver rhythmic agility so vital to this composer's music. In the lovely recurring descant for the two harps, Schwarz conveys more of the shimmering impressionism.

I warmed to the performance as it continued. The scherzo's opening percussion has great range and more body than in Seattle, Gauk investing this lively movement with more crisply articulated rhythms, the witty coda well done, where the various percussion timbres are barely distinguishable on Delos. Perhaps in the Adagio sereno Gauk lacks Schwarz's idiomatic touch, with the playing a little weighty and immobile, occasionally verging on portentous. Still the richness of the Moscow strings is hard to resist in the soaring lyrical pages, and if Schwarz is nimbler on his feet in the final dance, it's good to hear a robust performance of such weight and orchestral sonority, even with a tentative final chord. Despite the misgivings, one comes away thinking what a marvelous work this is, and who could wish for more than that? Why do our front-line orchestras--Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia--insist on recording yet more unneeded and mediocre Beethoven and Brahms cycles rather than the unjustly neglected music of our own composers, like Piston, Harris, and Hanson?

The three varied couplings are all brief works ranging from 10 to 12 minutes. The single-movement Piano Concertino of 1937 opens with a characteristic, sharply syncopated 3/4 Allegro, followed by a contrasting, thoughtful theme played by the soloist. The Göteborg first cellist's fruity timbre isn't very endearing in the ruminative middle section, yet Marjorie Mitchell's fiery, nimble-fingered advocacy in the playful finale is quite exhilarating. Despite the imposing title, Piston's Concerto for Orchestra is a small-scale piece in scope and ambition, written in three short movements. The opening's concerto-grosso-style bustle contrasts neatly with the ironic, jazzlike writing of the quick, lightspirited Allegro and the more interior inspiration of the final Passacaglia. In what was likely the celebrated ensemble's very first recording, the Emerson Quartet's 1978 reading of Piston's final work, the Concerto for String Quartet, is preferable to the Juilliard String Quartet with Schwarz. This is a darker, more searching reading, and the young Emerson players find greater depth in this concise 10-minute work than any rival.

All the recordings sound well in their remastered form and, despite some quibbles, Piston's ebullient and dignified rocky-road syncopations come through superbly. With the Concerto for Orchestra otherwise unavailable, this is an essential buy for Pistonians and all interested in American composers of the mid-20th century.

Lawrence A. Johnson

SKROWACZEWSKI Triple Concerto^1,2. DAVID Carmen Suite^1,3. Sinfonia Concertante^1,4 • Verdehr Tr¹; Leon Gregorian, cond; Solisti di Praga²; Jack Bowman, cond; Janáček PO³; Kenneth G. Bloomquist, cond; Michigan State U Wind S⁴ • CRYSTAL CD749 (62:15)

We know the name of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski as the conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony for 19 years, followed by seven seasons in the UK as principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra. In the years leading up to the Second World War, it was a career as a concert pianist that had brought him considerable success. That came to an end with injuries sustained in the conflict, and when hostilities ceased he went to Paris and spent time studying composition with Nadia Boulanger. He has since written a significant number of works, the present score being in response to a commission from The Verdehr Trio. The trio is unusual in its configuration of violin, piano, and clarinet, and to juxtapose its sonorities with the orchestra, Skrowaczewski used a chamber group of three flutes, bass clarinet, two trumpets, large percussion section, timpani, harpsichord, and a small string section. The result is one of the most interesting, fascinating, and enjoyable discoveries I have made in recent years. In the five contrasted movements, melody is used in a refreshing and often pungent way, the trio mainly employed as soloists rather than as an ensemble. Though there are passages calling for considerable virtuosity, the solo instruments are more often used in a lyrical mood, with the second and fourth movements in the form of a song. An energetic percussion department, at times reminiscent of a "pop" backing group, is used to contrast with this singing quality. Above all it is Skrowaczewski's intimate knowledge of orchestral sonorities that results in a score that totally captures the imagination.

Thomas Christain David is an Austrian-born (in 1925) composer whose association with the Verdehr Trio comes as a result of their meeting when he was invited as guest professor at the Michigan State University in 1977. The Carmen Fantasy is a fun piece based on Sarasate's Concert Fantasy on Themes from the Opera Carmen. David has dressed it up in 20th-century apparel, and has made a few naughty additions of his own to this violin virtuoso showpiece. The clarinet is often used to further embellish Sarasate's original violin line, and to spice the whole proceedings David adds some "wrong" passages. It is "tongue-in-cheek" humor, and you end up with a big smile.

The Sinfonia Concertante is another permutation in the use of the Verdehr Trio, whose sonorities are accompanied here by an orchestra consisting of wind instruments. In the notes on the work that have been prepared by the composer, David describes his desire to construct a work of lightness and transparency that uses dance as the inspiration. The opening movement is the most substantial, with a short Presto bringing the work to a playful conclusion.

The performances carry a splendid sense of conviction from all involved. The Solisti di Praga responding with tremendous enthusiasm for Leon Gregorian, a conductor who was appointed Director of Orchestras at Michigan State University in 1984. The Janáček Philharmonic joins in the Carmen Suite with gay abandon, and if the Michigan orchestra lacks the impact found elsewhere, that is due to the curiously balanced recorded sound. The disc proves an ideal showcase for the Verdehr, a trio with a long and distinguished pedigree, and now in residence at the Michigan State University. Throughout their playing is of the very highest quality, and any trio who can offer a violinist to perform the Carmen work with such brilliance and security has to be of quite exceptional ability. The disc comes from three pairs of producers and engineers who have differing ideas of balance. The Carmen Suite has the violin and clarinet very close, with the Sinfonia Concertante being quite the opposite. The happy medium is struck in the Triple Concerto, a very natural and ideally focused sound quality. It is being ungrateful to wish the disc had been devoted to one of the composers, as the lighter weight of the two David scores does make a rather curious coupling to the Skrowaczewski. Still, the disc has my enthusiastic recommendation.

David Denton

WINDS OF CHANGE: AMERICAN MUSIC FOR WIND ENSEMBLE FROM THE 1950s TO THE 1970s • John P. Paynter, cond; Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ens; Frederick L. Hemke (sax) • NEW WORLD 80211-2, analog (52:27)

PERSICHETTI Pageant. SMITH Expansions. BRANT Verticals Ascending. FINNEY Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra of Wind Instruments. BENNETT Symphonic Songs

A little detective work was required to determine that this collection is more than 20 years old. The annotations, however, have been updated to indicate that conductor John P. Paynter died in 1996; he had been Director of Bands at Northwestern since 1953, when he was only his mid twenties.

Not to denigrate the music at all, but Paynter's essay on concert-band music in the United States is one of the best reasons to acquire this disc. In it, he traces the rise of this genre from high schools to colleges and universities, and from marches and arrangements of popular works to original "serious" compositions, increasingly from the pens of American composers.

A variety of styles is represented on this disc. Vincent Persichetti's Pageant and Robert Russell Bennett's Symphonic Songs are straightforward enough to be enjoyed even by the typical halftime crowd at a college football game. The former is in two connected parts: a sober, slow introduction, and a more festive section. The latter consists of a "Serenade," a "Spiritual," and a "Celebration." The sly humor displayed in the first two movements turns raucous in the last, which riffs irreverently on The Old Grey Mare and other bits of Americana to depict, perhaps, a horse race at a Midwestern county fair.

The works by Hale Smith and Ross Lee Finney are more demanding. Smith's title refers not only to the music's structure but also to what he asks of the listener's intellect. Concentrated and volatile, its use of tone clusters creates challenging sonorities, but Smith's skillful scoring keeps the music transparent, and his thematic material is distinctive. Finney's concerto is in two movements, both based on an eight-tone scale, which lends the music a harmonically ambiguous feeling. The composer gives the percussionists a lot to do; if the score sounds slightly dated at all, it's only at the start of the second movement, where an aggressive passage for bongos initiates the action.

Henry Brant's wackily original Verticals Ascending (sounds more like the title of an abstract painting, no?) is fairly typical of this composer, who actually was born in Canada. Brant divides the ensemble in two and places them back-to-back on opposite sides of the stage, 50 feet apart and separated by a wall; only the conductors can see each other. The first group plays in common time, and the second in triple meter. This may sound like a recipe for chaos, and perhaps it is, but Brant planned his chaotic events with extreme care, and the music begins to make a sort of funhouse sense after the second or third hearing. Incidentally, Brant's intention here was to interpret by means of music Los Angeles's Rodia Towers, erected largely from scrap metal by immigrant worker Simon Rodia in the Watts district.

The professional-quality performances are by a student ensemble; one guesses that many of its members today teach at other colleges and universities. New World's sound complements the performances nicely. If this repertoire interests you even slightly, go ahead.

Raymond Tuttle

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Fanfare Reviews from July/August 1999

Fanfare Reviews
from July/August 1999