Fanfare Reviews
from November/December 2000

Reviews: Deák - Grainger - Reed - Fandango

C. DEÁK Anémones de Felix. Clarinet Concerto. Farina Pagus. Memento Mare¹. Symphony for Wind Orchestra • Andreas Hanson, cond; Wind O of the Royal College of Music, Stockholm; PCh¹ • NOSAG CD 053 (70:28)

I am always on the lookout for good wind music, especially that with "symphonic" dimensions. So it is that this disc went immediately onto my Want List for 2000.

This is a well-performed, generously timed collection of wind-orchestra works by a composer hardly anyone outside of Sweden is likely to know--the Hungarian-born Csaba Deák (b. 1932). Deák had already taken clarinet and composition lessons in his native country by the time be became a political refugee in Sweden in 1957. There he furthered his composition studies with Rosenberg and became very active as a teacher and organizer in Swedish musical circles. His output is not particularly large, and I believe his Vivax for Orchestra (1982) on a Phono Suecia CD is his only orchestral work (and Vivax, by the way, sounding at times like an updated Háry János suite, is excellent). What is significant, though, is Deák's contribution to wind music. Since 1969 he has specialized in works for wind orchestra (in a region not particularly known for symphonic wind music), and in 1981 he helped found the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE).

Deák's wind music is not populist like Gould's, not contrapuntal like Hindemith's, not melodic like Dello Joio's or Alfred Reed's, and not explosive like Husa's or Maslanka's. Brilliantly colored and argued in their own fashion, Deâk's works come close to resembling the more serious probing of those by Cindy McTee.

Anémones de Felix (1993) is the composer's self-described musical flower-greeting to Felix Hauswirth, head of the Swiss-based Internationale Musiktage. Deák claims that part of the title's allusion, besides the anemone flower, is the anemone of the sea. Deák equates the opening and closing of the creature's feelers to the "similar way the chords and 'clangs' of my piece open and close." The music is slow but constantly evolving while offering timbral enticement through ensemble and solo lines.

The Clarinet Concerto (1992) is stocked with colorful wind sonorities. The clarinet, as noted, is Deák's instrument, and his concerto is a self-assertive affair. An elegiac opening sets up a sort of game between the sedate and the unbuttoned, and this tension, and the flights of the clarinet, make for an entertaining, sometimes bluesy score.

Farina Pagus (1984) was commissioned by a wind orchestra that plays in the small Swedish town of Mjölby, whose name translates in Latin as Farina Pagus. The music develops through the sharp contrasts between the music's somber, languid lines and outbreaks of forte passages. Late in the work a solo clarinet initiates a soft promenade of wind sounds that slowly adds instruments and grows in martial character to an almost totalitarian menace. Then, suddenly, the music breaks up into rhythmic cells that swirl the piece to a dazzling conclusion.

The scoring for Memento mare (1995) includes a mixed chorus that sings word from the Requiem Mass--the work's "memento" and "mare" being remembrances of a sea disaster, the sinking of the ship Estonia, in September of 1994. The declamatory nature of the chorus's part links the music to the long tradition of music "in memoriam," but Deák's prayerful elegy is never maudlin or cheap, and its sincerity touches the listener. Its 12 minutes' length seems perfect for what it wants to accomplish.

The 1995 Symphony is the composer's first essay in the form, and it is more an example of the "harmony of sounds" definition of "symphony" than the modem one. It begins with some quick, fanfareish passages and then settles into several minutes of muted ensembling until it finally breaks loose. Concertante solo lines advance the music on top of feverish percussive taunts. A notable feature of the music is the frequency of pauses and tenuto chords that keep the music in sort of a suspenseful state and catch the inattentive listener by surprise. The constantly shifting symphony does not ultimately go anywhere that it seems to be going from one three-minute stretch to the next. Repeated hearings are required to do this substantial piece justice.

An excellent, challenging CD that I hope ends up opening the door for more explorations of Deák's music. A top disc in my listening year.

Stephen Ellis

GRAINGER Music for Band. HOLST 2 Suites for Band. SCHMITT Dionysiaques • Eivind Aadland, cond; Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces • SIMAX PSC 1208 (60:32)

GRAINGER Molly on the Shore. Lincolnshire Posy. Irish Tune. Shepherd's Hey

About a minute into the first movement of Lincolnshire Posy, the main tune, "Lisbon," is joined by "The Duke of Marlborough." It's a key moment, and you can tell a lot about a conductor's approach to Grainger by how he or she handles new material. Here, it elbows "Lisbon" aside with eager impatience--and it's therefore no surprise that the rest of the Grainger here, too, spills over with brash exuberance. I don't mean to suggest that it's all rough and tumble: The sonorities of Irish Tune are poignantly rich, and the performances are full of subtle timbral details (note, as but one example, the treatment of the sudden dissolve almost two minutes into "Lord Melbourne"). But while the Norwegian band plays with admirable polish throughout, it's polish without politeness: The woodwinds are tangy (try the acrid opening of "Rufford Park Poachers"), the brass flamboyant. Indeed, few other performances capture the paradoxically sneering opulence of Lincolnshire Posy or the rhythmic contradictions fueling Shepherd's Hey as vigorously as these readings do.

The performers are just as astute when it comes to Holst's very different sound world--note the sobriety of the First Suite's Chaconne, or the controlled joviality of the Second's March. And they similarly manage to communicate the hyperactive breeziness of Schmitt's Dionysiaques (it sounds in spots as if an inebriated Kashchei had accidentally stumbled into Pétroushka's fair) without sacrificing the rock-solid climaxes, which seem poised to shout out the familiar Hussite chorale, Ye Who Are Warriors of God. Excellent engineering too. All in all, a smashing release.

Peter J. Rabinowitz

REED El Camino Real¹. Divertimento for Flute and Winds¹. Armenian Dances, Vol. 1 and 2¹. Praise Jerusalem!² • Alfred Reed, cond; Senzoku Gakuen Symphonic Wind O¹. Toru Ito, cond; Otonowa Wind Symphonica² • KLAVIER KCD-11103 (63:05)

Alfred Reed (b. 1921), a former student of Vittorio Giannini, is everywhere in the wind world. He is one of its most frequently performed and revered composers, serves international guest-professorships frequently, and conducts wind orchestras around the world, having an especially exalted standing in Japan, where wind music has really taken off in the past 25 years (For a time in Japan six of his compositions were on the required list of works for all concert bands in the country!) And now with this Volume I CD entitled Alfred Reed Live!, of recent live performances, the Klavier label introduces what promises to be an integral series of his compositions.

The two sections of Reed's El Camino Real (1985), subtitled "A Latin Fantasy," are based on the jota and fandango, and further derive a Spanish influence from the use of traditional flamenco guitarists' chord progressions. This is uncomplicated but rousing music to get things going. The Divertimento for Flute and Winds (1996) is a brief concertante piece that contrasts a lyrical opening passage with a dancelike scherzando--the two elements becoming blended near the work's conclusion. The warm sonorities are inviting.

The two-part Armenian Dances is Reed's first acknowledged masterwork. Soon after Harry Begian, director of bands at the University of Illinois (1970-84), took his post there, he cocommisioned Reed to write these dances. Begian supplied Reed with the themes, which he remembered his father singing to him when Begian was a child--themes based on Armenian folk songs from the works of Gomidas Vartabed (1869-1935), the founder of Armenian classical music. Reed wrote Part I quickly, and it was premiered at Illinois under Begian in early 1973. Reed then worked more than two years to create Part II, and the entire dance set was premiered by Begian and the Illinois band in April 1976. What makes the suite a classic is its vibrancy and use of wind color. The single-movement Part I, Rondo on Five Folk Songs, begins with a fanfare before settling into lyrical pose for an extended period of time. Reed captures the Armenian nature of the harmonies and melodies with only very infrequent hints of Khachaturian, which is no mean feat. Part I's rhythms pulsate and step lively in the third and fifth songs, where the spirit of a ballet suite is pronounced. Part II is in three movements, and is comprised of treatments of three further folk songs, each melody substantial enough to form a separate movement. "The Peasant's Plea" is romantically tinged and heartfelt. "Wedding Dance" has gentle, pastorale rhythms--a quiet, intimate celebration. "Plowing Song from Lori District" is the most complex of all the reworkings; in the original melody, the farmer fuses his physical labor with his spiritual necessities in broad exclamations that Reed captures in robust, swirling passages contrasted with serene melodies. Through Parts I and II of the Armenian Dances Reed varies his compositional technique between variation form and pure rhapsody to remain true to the original expressions. At 30 minutes' length, the composition is an impressive and important component of symphonic-band literature.

Begian also commissioned Praise Jerusalem (1986), subtitled "Variations on an Armenian Easter Hymn." Here a seventh-century melody notated by Vartabed is transformed into an introductory theme, five variations, and finale. The dynamic opening is a programmatic reference to Christ's tomb being opened and "the earth reeling in shock before it," as Reed writes. The subsequent variations explore the symphonic possibilities of the main theme (and one theme is done in a Tchaikovskian, mock-"Nutcracker" fashion that will bring a smile to your face). The finale, with extra trumpets and trombones added to the scoring, brings renewed splendor to the theme, which Reed sees as "proclaiming the risen Christ throughout the world."

I congratulate Klavier on this venture, and I hope that we soon will see such Reed gems as the symphonies, the two suites, Passacaglia, Russian Christmas Music, and Punchinello Overture. The Japanese bands heard here, by the way, are superb, as are the sonics.

Stephen Ellis

FANDANGO • Eric Rombach-Kendall, cond; University of New Mexico Wind S; Philip Smith (tpt); Joseph Alessi (tbn) • SUMMIT SMT 271 (62:53)

GOLDSTEIN Colloquy. TURRIN Chronicles. Fandango. BOURGEOIS Concerto for Trombone and Concert Band. GRYC Evensong

Another fine CD of wind music from Summit. Two exceptional first-desk New York Philharmonic players--Philip Smith on trumpet and Joseph Alessi on trombone--team up with the outstanding University of New Mexico Wind Symphony for a program of compositions that neatly balance virtuosity, instrumental color, and substance.

The CD steps off in high spirits with Colloquy for trombone and symphonic band by New Jersey-born William Goldstein (b. 1942), a former student of Giannini and Flagello at the Manhattan School of Music, and a veteran composer for TV and films. Written in 1967 "during a most difficult period of national angst," the youthful influence of Copland and Bernstein is felt, as the composer was "filled with a desire to inspire." The music is somewhat jazzy (with a particularly Bernsteinesque slow central section) and is infectiously swinging in its finale. A good showpiece.

Chronicles for trumpet and wind ensemble and Fandango for trumpet, trombone, and symphonic band are the first commercially recorded works of Joseph Turrin (b. 1947), whose splendid NYP-commissioned Trumpet Concerto of 1988 is one of the highlights of the 1990 WQXR/NY Philharmonic Radiothon Special Edition, Vol. III, CD. Turrin--like Goldstein, New Jersey-born, a former student of Flagello at Manhattan, and a veteran composer for TV and films--thus considers Chronicles (1998) his unofficial Second Trumpet Concerto; it is both driving and melodic, with a fanfare figure that recurs as a unifying element. The expected lyrical middle movement is nonetheless not devoid of tensions that are released in the somewhat processional finale.

The Trombone Concerto (1988) of English-born, 59-year-old composer Derek Bourgeois has already become a staple of the trombone literature--in all three of its versions: with orchestra, with brass band, and, as recorded here, with concert band. Formal though the concerto is--it is conservative and Romantically tuneful--the piece is just plain irresistible. Themes are auburn-hued, and the nearly 10-minute first movement is nearly a miniature trombone concerto in its own right. The second movement, featuring a trombone quartet in places, offers elegant, rich lines of a Malcolm Arnold-like, folksy character. The third movement, a broad march in rondo form, is a slide-and-tongue twister for the soloist.

Stephen Gryc (b. 1949), a St. Paul native, contributes Evensong for trumpet and symphonic band (1999-2000), commissioned by the forces heard here. As its church-service title implies, Evensong is restrained and hymnal. Ancient dorian and mixolydian modes lend a slightly dark edge to the music, and soloist Smith produces a beautifully controlled plaintive tone.

Joseph Turrin returns with the CD's eponymous Fandango for trumpet, trombone, and symphonic band (2000). The piece is pure color and syncopated, triple-time Spanish rhythms. Though rather fluffy, the duo-solo composition provides a lively and satisfying summertime band-concert conclusion to the program.

Music fans, ahoy! Regardless of the temperature as you read this, the winds are up, and you should prepare to voyage to a Web site or store to seek out Fandango.

Stephen Ellis

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Fanfare Reviews from November/December 2000

Fanfare Reviews
from November/December 2000