Fanfare Reviews
from March/April 1995

MESSIAEN: Oiseaux exotiques^1,3. La Ville d'en haut^2,3. Un Sourire². Un Vitrail et des oiseaux^2,3. Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum². Karl Anton Rickenbacher conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra¹ and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra²; Yvonne Loriod, piano³. KOCH-SCHWANN CD-3-1123-2 H1 [DDD]; 70:57.

MESSIAEN: Oiseaux exotiques¹. Sept Haïkaï¹. Couleurs de la cité céleste¹. Un Vitrail et des oiseaux¹. La Ville d'en haut¹. Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum. Reinbert de Leeuw conducting the Netherlands Wind Ensemble; with Peter Donohoe, piano¹. CHANDOS CD-9301/2 [DDD]; two discs: 68:55, 32:53. Produced by Mike George, Richard Lee, and Chris Weber. (Distributed by Koch International.)

It might help to know, right off the bat, that my favorite Messiaen conductor is Pierre Boulez. His notorious scrupulousness to the score and attention to minute detail keep things clean and clear--a crucial consideration when dealing with Messiaen's frequent rhythmic layering (where you might have a complex Indian tala in the percussion underneath a brass plainchant and birdsongs in the winds), and he never allows the music to bog down under its own weight. That's why, before I even begin discussing these new releases, I want to put in a plug for Erato 4509-91706-2, a budget-priced CD on which Boulez conducts dynamic versions of Couleurs de la Cité Céleste and Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum (with, as a bonus, a fine L'Ascension conducted by Marius Constant).

Boulez is tough competition in these works, but both Rickenbacher and de Leeuw have their strong points. Rickenbacher has Yvonne Loriod on piano: older, yes, and perhaps having lost just the slightest bit of flash and fire, and yet Messiaen no doubt composed these important keyboard roles with her tone and touch in mind, and she brings a solidity and authority that shouldn't be underestimated. I like the sparkle of Peter Donohoe's playing. and he blends into the ensemble nicely without diminishing the piano's importance (Paul Crossley, too, is a fine Messiaen pianist. heard in dazzling accounts of Couleurs de la Cité Céleste and Oiseaux Exotiques conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen on CBS). But let's give a slight advantage to Loriod.

Both releases get high marks for programming. On a single disc Rickenbacher offers the two big works, plus three of Messiaen's latter-day "miniatures" which are often overlooked. Each of them is constructed around his trademark episodes--contrasting somber brass, lively winds, glittering percussion--though in a more compacted form. De Leeuw lacks the homage to Mozart, Un Sourire, but replaces it with Couleurs... and the valuable, seldom encountered Sept Haïkaï (at the cost, alas, of another disc, and an abbreviated one at that). Sound is brighter, and crisper on the Chandos, though the darker, deeper-toned Koch-Schwann suits Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum well, where the percussion is more (pardon me) striking and the huge climaxes especially confrontational, as you'd expect the raising of the dead to be.

As for the conducting itself, I give a slight edge to de Leeuw. Rickenbacher's tempos for Oiseaux Exotiques are the broadest I've heard (even more so than the worthy old Loriod/Neumann on Candide), which give him room for some sensitive phrasing, while de Leeuw revels in the piping birdsongs but keeps the tour bus moving quickly, à la Salonen. This quickness works well in Un Vitrail et des Oiseaux, emphasizing the birdsongs' appealing bright clatter against the monumental (some might say bombastic, but not me) portrayal of stained glass windows, and also in La Ville d'en Haut, where speed does not prevent flexible phrasing. That most monumental score, Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, is Rickenbacher's best performance, and de Leeuw's weakest. De Leeuw can't seem to hold together the disjunct events--brass outbursts, gong eruptions, and those crescendos that are meant to be truly earthshaking (Messiaen envisioned performances in the open air and on mountains)--and doesn't engage the imagination and spirit the way, say, Boulez does, where from moment to moment the music is compelling, mysterious, and frightening. Of the two works not on the Koch-Schwann disc, it's nice to have a respectable version of the atypical Sept Haïkaï (even if de Leeuw can't capture the atmosphere Boulez did on a still serviceable Everest LP; I wish I had for comparison's sake the live concert disc Kyle Gann all but dismissed in Fanfare 14:2). Anyway, de Leeuw redeems himself with a fine Couleurs de la Cité Céleste, where's he much more respectful of the plainchants than the obviously skeptical Boulez.

So, summary time. It's de Leeuw by a nose, because of the mostly fine interpretations and the extra pieces you get (and pay for). Rickenbacher is a good choice if you want all three of the hard-to-find "miniatures" on a single disc along with an impressive Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum. But don't forget Salonen or Boulez.

Art Lange

STAMP: Centograph¹. Chorale and Toccata². Antithigram². Past the Equinox⁴. The Melting of the Winter's Snow^2,3. Elegy and Affirmation². Fanfare for the Great Hall². Remembrance of Things to Come². Elegy for English Horn and Strings^4,5. Gavorkna Fanfare⁸. Journey Past the Unicorn^4,6. Canticle⁴. Daybreak for Marimba Ensemble⁹. Love's Philosophy⁶. O-Zone⁹. Jigsaw^4,7. Jack Stamp conducting the IUP Wind Ensemble¹ and the Keynote Wind Ensemble²; with Crystal Stryker, soprano³. Richard Fischer conducting the Concordia Wind Ensemble⁴; with Mary Ann Fasold, English horn⁵; Jodie Lynn Werley, soprano⁶; Jack Stamp, vibraphone and piano⁶; James Houlik, tenor saxophone⁷. Eugene Corporon conducting the CCM Wind Symphony⁸. Gary Olmstead conducting the IUP Percussion Ensemble⁹. CITADEL CTD 8105 [DDD]; 70:28. Produced by Tom Null. (Distributed by Klavier and Albany.)

With the spread of the neo-romantically inspired rediscovery of the mainstream American symphonic tradition of the 30s and 40s (from which most serious band music in this country is derived), the once-wide gulf between the worlds of established concert music and that of the previously insular symphonic wind ensembles--often affiliated with local institutions of higher or secondary education has begun to narrow in significant ways. Of course, the nationwide circuit of band clinics and conventions has continued to flourish, especially in the heartland of the country, but lately with a renewed sense of participating in the primary currents of our musical culture.

These reflections are prompted by this release of band--and percussion--pieces by a younger composer--Jack Stamp--heretofore unsung in any context. Most of them were written over the past several years (though one of the best--Antithigram--goes back to 1977); all are relatively short but distinctively pungent, even in many cases pugnacious, though a few--The Melting of the Winter's Snow, Journey Past the Unicorn, and Love's Philosophy (which is actually no more than an art song with piano accompaniment)--are lyrical sound-poems incorporating the human voice. Instead of writing in accepted classical forms (except for Chorale and Toccata), Stamp likes to give his snappy, tightly conceived works self-coined descriptive or metaphorical titles, such as Antithigram, Centograph, Past the Equinox, Remembrance of Things to Come, etc.

All these pieces reveal Stamp to be a resourceful orchestrator, with a penchant for attention-getting devices like ostinatos, bitonality, percussive embellishments (lots of tolling chime effects), and passages in the higher registers. Most are written to make a big aural splash, occasionally with an apocalyptic edge, and in this regard they succeed in spades. The collection's work, for example (Past the Equinox), dramatizes the conflict between night and day (or good and evil) in massive patterns of opposing sound blocks. The two works calling for instrumental soloists (Elegy and Jigsaw) are quite effective in exploiting the instruments' characteristic sonorities.

A student of two of America's most recognized specialists in the band repertoire--Robert Washburn and Fisher Tull--Stamp bids fair to become one of the leading lights of his own generation in this field. All the various ensembles heard here--primarily Stamp's own Keystone Wind Ensemble from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania--proclaim this music with great éclat, and producer Tom Null and engineer Bruce Leek take full advantage of Citadel's 20-bit digital recording process to leave indelible auditory impressions. (See a related review in this issue of band music by Robert Ward.)

Paul A. Snook

WARD: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra¹. The Scarlet Letter: Suite. Peter Perrett conducting the Winston-Salem Piedmont Triad Symphony; Sarah Johnson, violin¹. ALBANY TROY 126 [DDD]; 56:11.

WARD: Fanfare for Durham. Prairie Overture. Night Fantasy. Antiphony for Winds. Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Band¹. Four Abstractions for Band. Fiesta Processional. Fantasia for Brass Choir and Timpani. Jack Stamp conducting the Keystone Wind Ensemble; James Houlik, saxophone¹. CITADEL CTD 88103 [DDD]; 66:01. (Distributed by Klavier and Albany.)

Robert Ward, who is now in his seventy-seventh year, is, of all the American composers still active, carrying on the Eastman-Rochester spirit of nativist and Romantic neo-classicism--patented by Howard Hanson--in its purest form. And yet, in place of Hanson's Nordic influences, Ward has perfected a style of gentle suburban lyricism which is never too far from the inflections of the classic American popular idiom. This is why his frequent use of Baroque devices, such as, for example, the chaconne (heard in the opening movement of his new violin concerto) or the fugue (as in the large-scale Fantasia for Brass Choir and Timpani and several others works here), never sounds artificial or pretentious or even pedantic because it grows naturally out of the cultivated flow of the music's unending songfulness.

Although perhaps not quite as forceful a piece as his dynamic piano concerto (available on Bay Cities), this recent twenty-minute essay centered on what is probably the most singing of instruments is a very gratifying work for both listener and soloist. From the opening bars featuring a berceuse-like setting of an arch-formed but totally un-Schoenbergian twelve-tone theme (which is soon subjected to a rapid sequence of mini-variations), we know the composer has not abandoned his penchant for the ingratiatingly melodic linearity of his early symphonies. Of course, the relatively short and ambling middle movement marked "Blues" underscores Ward's kind of subtle Caucasian counterpart to the style of William Grant Still. However, the Allegro spiritoso final certifies that, when he wants to, Ward can write music with a get-up-and-go vigorousness, where his favored sonata form incorporates all manner of allusions to the American vernacular.

But appealing as the concerto is, the real heart of this release is Ward's splendiferous score for a choreographic treatment of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Quite different in tone from Hunter Johnson's more intense and introspective approach written for Martha Graham (which should find its first recording angel soon, it is hoped), Ward's thirty-six-minute work in seven continuous sections paints a broad canvas, which, with its seamless narrative drive and varied, inexhaustible musical incident, can be listened to without any prior knowledge of the specific literary program as a wonderful sequence of thematically interrelated sound pictures which together form an elaborate symphonic poem. In fact, the music, though dramatic enough at times, has an overall tapestry-like effect, as if envisioning a collective portrait of life in colonial New England, that may not sound exactly appropriate to the bitter and moralistic tale the novel tells, but what does it matter as long as we have this colorful synergistic score to enjoy!

The musicians involved in the premiers of both works--violinist Sarah Johnson and conductor Peter Perrett--play them with proper idiomatic sympathy, together with a topnotch orchestra which has participated in many Ward-related projects during his long tenure as President of the North Carolina School of the Arts.

* * *

Ward has over the years produced a large body of works for symphonic winds, and this release on the reborn Citadel label (produced by Tom Null and engineered by Bruce Leek, both originally of Varèse-Sarabande fame) includes many first recordings. The works cover a wide chronological span from the 1958 Prairie Overture (first recorded here in its original version for band) through the exciting Antiphony for Winds and the rambunctious Fiesta Processional (both of 1967) to the more recent prismatic Four Abstractions, which is perhaps the most complex and momentous work here. This listener is particularly pleased to hear one of Ward's most touchingly personal expressions, the meditative Night Fantasy of 1962, together with a band transcription (by Robert Leist) of the 1984 saxophone concerto, as played by its dedicatee James Houlik, who also performs the original version for full orchestra on a recent Albany release.

Made up of faculty and students from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, this new Keystone Wind Ensemble under its conductor Jack Stamp (whose own music is reviewed elsewhere in this issue) plays with real polish and pith, though their tempos sound a tad on the cautious side. With a slight boost in the bass, the 20-bit digital technology utilized by Citadel acquires a good deal of the depth and fullness these bright and vibrant scores require.

Both releases are not-to-be-missed issues for anyone who enjoys the mainstream American idiom.

Paul A. Snook

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Fanfare Reviews from March/April 1995

Fanfare Reviews
from March/April 1995