Fanfare Reviews
from March/April 1985

MUSIC FOR WINDS, Volume II. London Wind Orchestra conducted by Denis Wick. NONESUCH 78026-1, produced by John Boyden, $8.98.

GRAINGER: Molly on the Shore. Irish Tune from County Derry. Shepherd's Hey. A Lincolnshire Posy. MILHAUD: Suite Française. POULENC: Suite Française after Gervaise.

Any band-music specialists who may have been waiting for this particular shoe to drop have needed to possess vast reserves of patience. Volume One of this series, not so labeled, come out here in 1980, as Nonesuch N 78002. Presumably they've both been available right along in the U.K. on the Enigma label.

Percy Grainger's little pieces carry some hidden kicks, particularly in the rhythmic department. The more uninhibited syncopative predilections--such as those found in Shepherd's Hey--have defeated most interpreters, although the composer left plenty of recordings to show how things ought to go. Shepherd's Hey defeats Wick and his band, but other things come off reasonably well, including A Lincolnshire Posy, in which he is able to clarify textural matters left ambiguous some years ago by the brilliant kids at Eastman. The Milhaud school-band piece at last gets a thorough sound-updating (It was never among Mercury's best showpieces), but the performance is relatively tame. Poulenc's work by the same name is a disappointment, a nearly straight transcription of Gervaise, more effective in its solo-keyboard original garb.

I really didn't intend to bring it up, but it happened. Inevitably this repertoire is going to be compared with the performances recorded in the early 1960s by the Eastman Wind Ensemble under the direction of Frederick Fennell. A bootless enterprise perhaps, since the original Mercury discs are long departed, and Philips' reissues of selected portions in the Golden Imports series are re-equalized to charm midrange-loving Netherlandish ears.

The used-copy price of those early Mercury productions has gone into orbit, thanks to the contributors to that golden-ears rag in Long Island. The London Wind Orchestra under Wick is invariably tamer than EWE/Fennell, yet the Enigma recording is not bad, and a great deal of elegant detail is brought forward. The Nonesuch disc is well pressed if poorly annotated, quite serviceable in good late-1970s sound.

John D. Wiser

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Fanfare Reviews from March/April 1985

Fanfare Reviews
from March/April 1985