Fanfare Reviews
from March/April 2001

Reviews: Reed - Weill - French Wind Band Classics

REED First Suite^{2,
4}. Marimba Concertino^1,3. Russian Christmas Music^1,4. Symphony No. 4^1,3 • Alfred Reed¹, cond; Toru Ito, cond²; Senzoku Gakuen Symphonic Wind O³; Otonowa Wind Symphonica 1997⁴ • KLAVIER KCD-11108 (64:43)

This is the second volume--Alfred Reed Live! 2--of Klavier's new series presenting the wind music of Alfred Reed. (Volume 1 was reviewed in 24:2.) The four-movement First Suite for Band of 1975 is an intentional "welding together," as Reed puts it, of different styles "to see whether that approach would work with the material I had in mind. I am happy to say that it did," though at its premiere "several eyebrows were raised when the third movement began, at this seemingly inappropriate mixture of styles." Consider my eyebrows raised. After starting with conventional fast and then slow movements, the suite presents a third-movement rag and a concluding fourth-movement circus gallop. I hadn't heard the First Suite in quite a few years, and I'll admit that I hadn't remembered it being so uninspired. In 2001, I find these "popular" last movements common fare--uninvolving. Forgive me for calling the First Suite a "gem" at the end of my review of Live! 1. Let's move on.

I've never found the marimba a satisfying solo instrument--run, tremolo, run, tremolo, ad infinitum. It can basically play only louder or softer, higher and lower. I soon tire of the sound, regardless of the virtuosity on display, and I rarely relisten to solo-marimba works. Reed's Concertino for Marimba and Winds of 1991 presents no exception to the marimba experience for me. The music is tuneful but mostly superficial, and I played the work more than once only because the reviewer's code of honor compelled me to. The boogie finale didn't work at all for me.

But now for the two works that should tempt you to buy this installment. Reed wrote his Russian Christmas Music at the age of 23, revising it in 1946, and in 1947 the piece became a winner in a Columbia University contest for serious symphonic-band music. In four sections, the work weaves original material and Eastern Orthodox Church liturgical music around an ancient Russian Christmas carol to create a majestic tone poem. Some passages sound Hovhanessian, and the music, constantly in contrast both in texture and expressiveness, holds one's attention through its 15-minute length and on subsequent rehearings. The closing section, Cathedral Chorus, is an especially powerful buildup of tonal color.

The Fourth Symphony of 1993 is the best thing on this anthology, and I hope that Klavier will not be parceling out Reed's symphonies one per disc. If that happens, and you want just symphonies, you will have to buy five CDs. (The impossible-to-find World Wind label presents Reed's Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies all on one CD, though I have not heard it and cannot comment on the performances.) Symphony No. 4 separates strong outer movements with a lilting, waltzlike movement in 5/8 meter--also a concession to music in a popular style but here one that works because it is just off-center enough to be interesting. In the final movement, Tarantella, the dramatic spirit returns in swirling and punctuated motifs that bring the symphony to an exciting conclusion.

These performances are a knockout. The Japanese have become devoted fans and performers of wind music, and regularly invite America's leaders in such repertoire to present their works at local festivals. Hats off to Klavier for this Reed series. (Eager I am to see how deeply into this composer's works list Klavier goes.) And since critics are never satisfied with what they have, let me take this opportunity to plug the works of David Maslanka, to me the reigning American wind master, and urge Klavier to consider a series presenting his many, many fine compositions.

Stephen Ellis

WEILL Violin Concerto. Kleine Dreigroschenmusik. Berlin im Licht, for band • Gerd Müller-Lorenz, cond; Munich RO; Henri Raudales (vn) • ORFEO C 539 001 A (50:47)

You may recall David Hamilton's deservedly famous description of Klemperer's 1930 go at four numbers from the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (Die Dreigroschenoper: Historical Recordings, 1928-1931, Capriccio 10 346; 14:4): "The conductor's characteristically relaxed steadiness guides playing of an unself-consciously vernacular flavor, with accents of both the modish palm court and the sleazy beerhall. The stolid, punchy strides of the tuba and the bass drum, the timbral nuances of the solo players, even the occasional lapses of unanimity . . . are all communicative and vividly registered . . . ." Gerd Müller-Lorenz seems to have had something similar in mind in this collection of Weill evergreens. Of course, one does not step twice into the same stream, but his Munich Radio instrumentalists obviously share an affinity with the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik's jazz-inflected pop origins, and their renderings are deliciously blowsy if not downright bluesy. Surprisingly, the Violin Concerto opens to this approach, seeming to disclose a demotic subtext--which I do not believe Weill at that stage of his career (and still in thrall to Busoni) intended--which leavens his musical Esperanto with something like snide insider smirks. Say what you will, it perks a rather self-conscious piece into something a bit more complex than the briskly propulsive, abrasively deadpan, generically polished and modern accounts usually heard, for instance, from Nona Liddell and the London Sinfonietta under David Atherton (Deutsche Grammophon 289 459 442-2). That welcome reissue from a 1976 three-LP collection (including the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik and numbers from Happy End) makes perhaps the strongest case yet for Weill as a classic, a master craftsman, freed from the taint of time and place, deodorized, rehabilitated, and smartly dressed for the concert hall . . . to which this is the ideal digital foil. Weill's incandescently shimmying arrangement for military band of his song Berlin im Licht confects a final elegance. Fun. Fascinating. And, finally, compelling. The sound, while transparent, is taken from a spaciously middling distance. No matter--enthusiastically recommended!

Adrian Corleonis

FRENCH WIND BAND CLASSICS • Timothy Reynish, cond; Royal Northern College of Music Wind O; Joseph Alessi (tbn)¹ • CHANDOS CHAN 9897 (72:23)

SCHMITT Dionysiaques, op. 62. SAINT-SAËNS Orient et Occident, op. 25. BOZZA Children's Overture. MILHAUD Suite française, op. 248. BERLIOZ Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, op. 15¹

For folk outside the banding world, only two of these five works--the Berlioz and Milhaud--could be counted "classics," though the rest ought to be. Florent Schmitt's Dionysiaques (1914) seems suddenly to be enjoying the prominence that it always should have had: For years the only version in the catalog was that of the Musiciens des Gardiens de la Paix conducted by Désiré Dondeyne on Calliope (CAL9859). Only a few months back it was joined in the catalog by the Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces under Eivind Aadland on Simax (PSC 1208). Now here comes another new recording. Dondeyne remains the first choice: He gets a snarling malevolence from the score that neither of the other conductors comes anywhere near; indeed, Timothy Reynish takes a radically different, pointedly better-natured view of the piece. In his hands the lowering, baleful, bad-tempered energy that stalks the music (you think I'm exaggerating? I played it to a friend whose nine-year-old daughter was so frightened by it that she begged me to take it off) becomes almost good-natured, outgoing, genial, surprisingly so.

Eugène Bozza's Children's Overture (1964) is a relative rarity, not otherwise available; Milhaud's Suite française (1945), on the other hand, has never wanted for friends. What these two works have in common is their thematic reliance on French folk song, which gives them a common buoyancy and fresh-faced enthusiasm. Berlioz's Symphonic funèbre et triomphale, too, is a standard of the repertoire, and if the Schmitt weren't enough to alert you to the fact that Reynish's geniality in that piece was symptomatic of his outlook as a whole, the relaxed readings of the Milhaud and the Berlioz would confirm it: The first lacks rhythmic bite, the second wants for grandeur and tension--and he should have doubled the number of percussionists. He's entitled to his view, of course, though I think the music misses something thereby.

The discovery here is Saint-Saëns's "Grande marche pour grande harmonie," Orient et Occident, op. 25 (1869), which the back of the jewelcase tells us occurs here in the "premiere recording of 1869 original," while the notes state that "Saint-Saëns's `grande harmonie' included three saxophones, cornets, trumpets and chromatic bugles, and a `Basse à quatre cylindres,' and it is here played in a new edition, which accommodates modern instruments"--there may be no contradiction here, but the information is confusing as supplied. The music itself is huge fun, though it strikes this ear as much more Occident than Orient, almost Royal Air Force march-past material, notwithstanding the slinky melody enlivened with touches of janissary percussion in the central section--Boléro ante diem, even down to the persistent rhythmic formula on side-drum, so much so that I wonder whether Ravel knew this piece; it may well have acted as a model, conscious or otherwise. A super little piece that should bring much pleasure.

Reliable performances (no accommodation necessary for the fact that these are student players) in first-rate sound. Straightforwardly informative notes from Timothy Reynish himself. With more tightly focused interpretations, this could have been a thrilling disc; as it is, it's just enormously enjoyable.

Martin Anderson

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Fanfare Reviews from March/April 2001

Fanfare Reviews
from March/April 2001