Fanfare Reviews
from May/June 1998

HANDEL Music for the Royal Fireworks. Concerti a due cori: No. 2; No. 1; No. 3 • Jeanne Lamon (vn), cond; Tafelmusik (period instruments) • SONY VIVARTE SK 63073 (65:44)

HANDEL Music for the Royal Fireworks (original version without strings). Concertos: in F, HWV 331/316; D, HWV 335a. Passacaille, Gigue, and Menuet (art. Pinnock from HWV 399). Occasional Suite in D (arr. Pinnock from HWV 33 and 21) • Trevor Pinnock (hpd, org), cond; The English Concert (period instruments) • ARCHIV 453 451-2 (59:41)

Already complicated enough as regards the Water Music, the discographical picture takes on a further level of complexity when we consider Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. Here it is not enough to distinguish between period-instrument and modern-instrument ensembles. We have also to be clear whether the performers are using the version of the work that Handel presented at the Foundling Hospital on May 27, 1749, which included strings, or the one heard exactly a month earlier for the actual firework display celebrating the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, when it seems that at King George II's insistence the music was entrusted to a huge band of "martial instruments"--woodwinds, brass, and percussion--to the exclusion of strings.

Of the two new entrants under consideration here, one falls, as the headnote shows, into each of those two categories. Both are of the period-instrument persuasion, though the Archiv booklet uses the term "authentic instruments," which really ought to be proscribed by now, given our increasing awareness of how relative, tendentious, and inauthentic a concept "authenticity" is. Sony's booklet is, incidentally, more thoroughgoing in its information, for it lists not only all the orchestral players but also the provenance of their instruments.

So much for preliminaries. Turning to the performances themselves, I find Jeanne Lamon's with the Toronto-based Tafelmusik one of the best among those that offer the version of the work with strings, though it would not be quite my first choice. Produced by Wolf Erichson, who was responsible for most if not all of the Telefunken LPs by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt that established period instruments on the recording scene in the first place back in the 1960s, it has the advantage of exceptionally natural and vivid sound. This gives David Campion's spirited timpani playing, to take just one example, an exciting edge. The playing all round, for that matter, is excellent, and Lamon's decisions in the spheres of musicology, instrumentation, tempo, and interpretation are always sensible and persuasive. What I miss is the last degree of exuberance, such as is to be found in Jordi Savall's performance, coupled with a delightful Water Music, on Astrée with Le Concert des Nations, and the equally beguiling sense of genial relaxation in Sir Charles Mackerras's latest recording of the work, made with the English Chamber Orchestra for the Swiss Novalis label in 1993.

Mention of Mackerras complicates things still more, in at least two respects. For one thing, the ECO is a modern-instrument orchestra, so its performance might be regarded as competitive with other modern-instrument recordings rather than with Lamon or Savall. But Mackerras by now--and he was already a master in the field when I interviewed him for the Handel chapter in my book Conductors on Conducting back in 1977--seems so much at ease with the style, and so adept at conveying period-instrument lessons to modern-instrument players, that his performance cuts clear across such mechanical distinctions to home in on the heart of the music, as indeed any really convincing performance should. Furthermore, Mackerras has made at least two previous recordings of the Fireworks Music, with a pickup ensemble drawn from London orchestras for Vanguard in the 1960s and with the London Symphony Orchestra for EMI a decade later; both of those performances were of the original stringless version of the score; and though neither is currently available on CD, the impression they still make in their LP incarnations is so strong as to modify my reaction to other recordings of the original version. Vanguard does have another one on CD, by that same English Chamber Orchestra (and thus, like both of Mackerras's, on modern instruments) conducted by Johannes Somary. It has much to recommend it, including not only polished playing and generally stylish conducting but also recorded sound that realizes the rich textures of multiple horn and trumpet parts with unusual lucidity. Yet the physical impact of the Mackerras recordings, particularly of the later and sonically more successful EMI one, is not quite equaled in Somary's version, nor is the Mackerras charm, which is hard to do without once you have encountered it.

Trevor Pinnock's new Archiv release with the English Concert of the no-strings score--his 1984 recording of the "standard" version for the same label and with nominally the same orchestra is still in the catalogs--measures up to this admirable musician's usual high standard, but again does not rival Mackerras in musical terms; more surprisingly, this particular "4-D" Deutsche Grammophon recording, though clean and warm, is no match for the analog-derived Somary recording or for either of my pure-analog Mackerras LPs in sheer thrilling brilliance and majesty of tone--and if those qualities are missing from a recording of Handel's original open-air jamboree, I don't really see its point. Another surprise is that Pinnock, who in his 1984 recording was over-dotting with the best of them, elects this time to play the rhythms of the overture's introduction as written--a dubious stylistic decision. (Mackerras, with his characteristic questing imagination and open-mindedness, gives us double-dotting in the performance that opens the suite, and then adds the as-written version as a bonus alternative. With the facilities that CD technology brings, the listener can program either reading at will into any specific listening session.) And judged by the side not just of Mackerras or Savall but of Lamon or Somary too, Pinnock's main Allegro in the overture emerges a shade too insistently urgent, if not quite as tight-lipped as in his own older recording.

I doubt whether couplings will be decisive for many collectors. If they are, then for these two new issues the choice lies between a stimulating and relatively unfamiliar assortment of edited and arranged Handel pieces on Pinnock's disc, and Lamon's more conventional, but also more substantial, offering of the three concertos for double orchestra. Curiously, Donald Burrows, whose Sony booklet notes are otherwise a model of informed and informative judgment, seems to find the third of these works (which Handel later arranged as an organ concerto) less attractive than the other two, whereas I have always loved it the most. The difference of opinion may be due to Lamon's fast and rather inconsequential handling of the marvelous Andante larghetto fourth movement, which Mackerras on his identically programmed Novalis disc imbues with much more of its quintessential Handelian grandeur and dignity.

Of course, if it's original instruments you must have in the Fireworks Music, then Leopold Stokowski's RCA Victrola recording must be regarded as a prime contender: he includes actual firework noises in the last repeat of the concluding minuet. If I were to say that Stokowski's performance of the suite as a whole--in which the musical instruments are of course modern--is one of very few I have heard that rivals Mackerras's relaxed musicality and warmth, I should be exceeding the bounds of both good sense and good taste. Excesses of phrasing and vibrato alike make parts of it hard to take. Yet there is much to enjoy in the old magician's interpretation, and his reading of the La paix siciliana, where the tempo is flowing and the ritards at the ends of sections are for once kept within entirely reasonable bounds, achieves a touching solemnity that few of his competitors have matched.

Bernard Jacobson

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Variations on a Theme By Glinka^1,2. Clarinet Concerto^1,3. Trombone Concerto^1,4. HUSA Music for Prague 1968⁵. PROKOFIEV Athletic Festival March¹ • Arthur D. Chodoroff¹ and Karel Husa⁵, cond; Temple U Wind S; Jonathan Blumenfeld (ob)²; Anthony M. Gigliotti (Cl)³; Eric Carlson (trb)⁴ • ALBANY TROY 271 (55:28)

The three works Rimsky-Korsakov wrote in 1877 and 1878 when he was Inspector of the Imperial Naval Bands are among the finest pieces for solo instruments and band that exist. They provide a chance for solo display without resorting to hackneyed transcriptions that are so common in band music. The Glinka Variations use the theme Why Are You Crying, Pretty One?, which also appears in the finale of the Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony. It is a spectacular little piece. The Clarinet Concerto is in three brief movements. It is lovely and lyrical without themes that are quite as memorable as its companions. The Trombone Concerto is a special favorite of mine. I came to know it while a college student in the late 1950s through a spectacular recording on Circle Records (later on Classic Editions) played by Davis Shuman and an ensemble drawn from the NBC Symphony under Tibor Serly's baton. Few have equaled it.

Karel Husa (b. 1921) is a Czech-born American composer who taught at Cornell for several decades beginning in 1954. His Music for Prague 1968 was inspired by the Soviet military invasion of his homeland in that year. Written for the Cornell Concert Band, it has been one of the most frequently performed modern works, perhaps as much for its political ramifications as any thing else. It is a lengthy (23+ minutes) work in four movements. Portions of the old Czech battle hymn Ye Warriors of God and His Law drift in an out. It is a rather difficult piece which, I must admit, I have never cared for. Even so, this is a deeply emotional reading under the composer's baton. It is the finest recording I know of this work.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote a number of marches for Military band. Four were recorded on Melodiya/Angel SR 40108 by the USSR Defense Ministry Band. These were all written in an effort to satisfy the demands of Socialist Realism. The Athletic Festival March, also called the March for the Spartakiad, 1935, was the first of these efforts. It is a rousing good piece that includes some Russian folk influences yet maintains a clear connection with the composer's normal style.

Performances are all first rate. For the three Rimsky works you'll do no better than these three performances. The Prokofiev has a pizzazz that is missing from the older Melodiya issue. The only trombonist who equals Carlson in the Concerto is Christian Lindberg, who has recorded it twice for BIS, once with orchestra and once with wind band. The Temple University group is a crack ensemble, one of the best in the country. Arthur Chodoroff is an able leader. All of the soloists are associated with Temple University either as faculty or alumni. Perhaps the star of the group is Anthony Gigliotti, who was principal clarinetist of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1949 to 1996. Jonathan Blumenfeld and Eric Carlson are also members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Albany's sound is superb. This is a fine release.

John Bauman

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Fanfare Reviews from May/June 1998

Fanfare Reviews
from May/June 1998